Barbell Shrugged - What Louie Simmons, Gary V, and Eric Cressey All Have In Common w/ Jordan Syatt, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Kenny Santucci — Barbell Shrugged #392

Episode Date: May 8, 2019

Jordan Syatt is the owner, operator, and main contributor to Syatt Fitness. While Jordan covers a variety of topics, he mainly focus on subjects relating to powerlifting, strength training, fat loss, and athletic performance. If you’re looking to improve strength, athletic performance and/or body composition…you’ve made it to the right place.   Jordan is a 5x World Record Powerlifter as well as a Precision Nutrition and Westside Barbell Certified coach. He’s been featured in a variety of media publications including CNN, The Huffington Post, Men’s Fitness Magazine, Schwarzenegger.com, T-Nation.com and he has a Bachelors of Science in Health & Behavior Science with a focus in Strength & Conditioning. Training and nutrition aside, Jordan is obsessed with travelling, is a huge mama’s boy and, given one wish, he would be a wizard.   In this episode of Barbell Shrugged we talk about Jordans background,  learning the science of coaching, what the goal is when working with professional athletes, the importance of internships, gym language, why putting out free content is so valuable, celebrity fitness and traveling with clients, why you have no excuse to give up and quit, and much more.   Enjoy! - Anders and Doug Episode Breakdown 0-10: Jordans background, college wrestling, West Side Barbell, and working Eric Cressy 11-20: How Jordan understood Louie’s Simmons articles, when Jordan realized that building his business was more important than pursuing powerlifting, and the emotions of letting go of your training identity 21-30: Intermittent fasting, the stuid things Jordan would do to cut weight, and leg day 31-40: Learning the science of coaching, one of the best things Cressy ever told him, and what the goal is when working with professional athletes 41-50: The Boyle internship process, the importance of internships, gym language, working with the general population, and why coaching women is so fun 51-60: Hotel workouts and the fitness scene around the world 61-70: Getting people stronger vs. performance, crazy gym locker room stories, and why putting out free content is so valuable 71-80: How Jordan stays motivated, Jordan’s insane internship process, and choosing your priorities 81-90: CEO’s, celebrity fitness and traveling with clients 91-100: The importance of balance, why you have no excuse to give up and quit, the business side of managing Gary, creating content, and the value of long form articles 101-110: Learning how to lead a group of people, letting go of your ego, and why giving out quality free advice is valuable 111-122: Why the in person experience of a gym is so special, the importance of human connection, the human capacity to adapt, and where to find Jordan   ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs-syatt ----------------------------------------------------------------------- @organifi - www.organifi.com/shrugged to save 20% @halo- gethalosport.com/Barbell  $20 off an additional $100 for presale orders @whoop - whoop.com  “shrugged” for 20% off @vuori - www.vuoriclothing.com “SHRUGGED25” to save 25% storewide   ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

One year, one ton. The One Ton Challenge. Shrugged family, we are testing the lifelong pursuit of strength. Take your best snatch, clean, jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench press. Add them up and find your one ton total. I want this to equal 2,000 pounds. If it doesn't, let's get stronger. If it does, welcome to the One Ton Club. Head over to theonetonchallenge.com.

Add your PRs to the free leaderboard. This leaderboard is the starting point. At the end of the month, we will be releasing the One Ton Training Plan to take your snatch, clean, jerk, squat, dead, and bench press higher than they ever have been before as you enter into the one-ton club one year one ton this week on the show it's gary b's trainer jordan saya if that is all you know about him stick around he's a power lifting world record holder and interned at westside barbell with louis simmons and cressy Sports Performance with Eric Cressy and Tony

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That's failing. That is not good. It's pretty much awful. So what do I do? Slow things down a little bit. Less Metcon, less conditioning, try and build a little bit of muscle, work on some movement, but basically keeping intensity relative to my HRV, my resting heart rate and recovery. Whoop gives me the best data for tracking recovery so I know when my body is primed to perform and when I need to hit the brakes.

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That's what she thinks. It's all part of my game. Whoop.com. Use the coupon code SHRUG to save 15%. Jordan Syatt. Let's go. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Kenny Santucci. Dude, we're

in our New York home. We just took a four-hour bus ride from Boston coming down to hang at Solace New York. Jordan Syatt's in the house. This is exciting stuff. We got the video camera. You are like everything you do is on video camera these days. Yeah, basically doing the Gary Vee approach.

I love it. Literally, Rico's the man. He comes with me everywhere. He films everything. It's awesome. It's awesome, man. Yeah, we're definitely going to get into how you got hooked up with Gary Vee. But, dude, what's a little bit of your training background?

And a little power lifting, a little west side barbell? Yeah, so basically I grew up wrestling. I started wrestling when I was eight years old. Sick fuck. You wrestled too? Yeah, I wrestled through college. Really? Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. I was a high school stud, college stud. Got it. Yeah. Got my ass kicked. It's a different game. I'm a really good high school level athlete. You know what? I realized that my first match of college,

I got there and I'm like, dude, this guy's a lot more serious. He just choked the shit out of me for seven minutes straight. I said, all right, I think I got to rethink this. I could just join a frat, right? You realize that when you look at college wrestling, you realize most people aren't getting pinned. In high school, pins are all the time. College wrestling, it's like you're winning by points. Yeah, and it's not a lot of points. Yeah, exactly exactly you're not like taking them down and letting them up in college very rarely is that happening it's a fight for three points exactly

so that whole background really just trains trains you to be sick in the head it really does in a number of ways the nutrition aspect the cutting weight aspect all the way to like the actual like doing stupid stuff in training like the coaches in high school don't know what the hell they're doing they're just this dumbest stuff uh but yeah absolutely teach you just be relentless yeah a lot of ways so wrestled all through high school um took a year off after high school i traveled for a year uh didn't go to college so i didn't go i like basically went to israel for a year traveled and then went to uh university of delaware and i started off i was going to major in exercise science but i had been I basically went to Israel for a year, traveled, and then went to University of Delaware. And I started off, I was going to major in exercise science, but I had been personal training and working in different internships since I was 14.

And so when I got into exercise science, I realized this stuff is ridiculous. It's useless. A lot of the people teaching it, they had no idea what they were talking about. They weren't coaching anybody. They were just saying stuff that was very outdated and i knew that from coaching already from when i was 14 psychology and everything was going to be much more important than any of this stuff so i switched into behavioral health psychology and uh and then from there started writing i was powerlifting in college so i started uh the powerlifting team at university of delaware and ended up writing louis you started it oh killer started basically i uh

i started working with martin birkin so when i was in right when i got into college martin birkin the lean gains intermittent fasting guy i was like man i want to learn how to lose fat because this guy knows what he's doing so i hired him when i was a freshman in college i emptied my bank account paid him 350 bucks i was like i just want to learn how to do this so like it was a 100 commitment but only 350 dollars online coaching was just starting it was like in 2010 it was like just starting out not really big i was i didn't have any money like barely anything so i paid him and that was great and then from there i was getting really big into powerlifting and so i emailed louis simmons and i was like hey man i would love to i would love to

learn from you just like anything i can do i'll take the trash out, I'll clean the floors, just let me come. And his response to me was, he was like, literally, like verbatim, I still have the email. He was like, our weakest guy squats 800 pounds. What do you have to offer? And so then that was his response. You're like, I'm really good at taking the trash out. Basically. Do you have a trash man?

What were you weighing at that time, though? I weighed about 127 pounds so you're like louis six x body weight and so in my mind i was like man i can either just not respond and be like okay never mind or i can go all out so i said i don't give a fuck what your strongest guy squats i don't care i'll come in i'll work harder than all of you so he invited me out to west side to for like a two-. Basically, he put me through two days of brutal training in which like everything, he was like, all right, first thing, we're doing rack pulls. It was like how much weight, how many sets and reps.

He was like, go as heavy as possible until it hurts too much. And I was like, okay, cool. What's next? And he was like, all right, we're going to do like front squats with an SS bar. I was like, okay, how much weight, how many sets and reps? He was like, as heavy as possible until it hurts too much. Over and over and over for two days. Then at the end of that, he was like, all right possible until it hurts too much over and over and over for two days then at the end of that he was like all right i'll see you over the summer so i went back over

the summer trained 11 times a week with him over that summer my total went up 300 pounds oh holy shit yeah it was nuts and so that was that was like when i really started getting a power thing and then from there the winter after that i trained at cressy trained at cressy for about three and a half four months yeah. And then I finished college. And by the time I finished college, I had already started writing on my website, making YouTube videos. So then I had an online coaching business

that sort of was born out of just making content. That's impressive, though. How'd you jump from, all right, hey, I work with Louie Simmons to now working with one of the best sports coaches in the country? So basically what happened was I was through all of this time,

a lot happened in this time. I was sharing a lot of content. I was writing articles. I was reading Eric's content from the time I was in high school. Eric's actually, Eric Cressy, his big takeoff was from, because he strength trained my high school, my kids in my high school, and they ended up winning the National Championship. We heard about your high school yesterday when we were hanging out with Tony General Corps. He was talking about your high school, my kids in my high school, and they ended up winning the national team. We heard about your high school yesterday when we were hanging out with Tony General

Corps. So a lot of my friends. He was talking about your high school. That's cool. A lot of my friends were training with Eric before Eric blew up, before he was anything. And so they were like, I was wrestling. They were like, man, you got to come. But my like wrestling workouts were much more high intensity.

They didn't do a lot of strength training. It was like, so I was like, oh, why would I, why would I do five reps when I could do 20? And I was like, this guy doesn't make, make know anything but i started to read his stuff and then so i started to share a lot of his work so basically eric started to see my name pop up um just from when i was posting on facebook and posting on like youtube and all the stuff so when i applied to work to like intern with him he just responded he was like yeah you can come i didn't even have to fill out an application he was like yeah you can because he saw my name so much so basically went from

being at west side and eric had a has a huge powerlifting background um he's trained at south side i believe in connecticut and so when i applied there he was like yeah just come on down and worked out really well you started doing this when you were 14 you said though like interning with people were you so doing training? Were you training before that? Yeah. So it was actually, it was very fortunate because my high school, they had kettlebells in it. And I don't know any high school gym

that has kettlebells in it. Especially not 15 years ago. Yeah. 20 years ago. I was like, these are amazing. I don't know how to use them. So I Google searched kettlebell gyms

around my town and I found one. And so I was like, hey, can I come and like... Did they speak English or just like a grungy Russian dude? Like fucking swing it. Have you ever heard of punch kettlebell gym?

It's a, it's a chain. Uh, I forget the guy who owns the actual chain, but basically, um, I was like, Hey,

can I come and work here? And like basically intern like for free. And they're like, yeah, for sure. So I went and I did that when I was 14. And then by the time I was 16, I was actually coaching people.

And I did that all through high school. And so by the time I – and they were the ones who introduced me to Eric Cressy. They were the ones who introduced me to Dan John, Pavel Tatsulin, like all these people. Joe DeFranco. They introduced me to all these people at a really young age. I didn't spend too much time in like a lot of the bro stuff. I didn't spend too much like looking at the magazines. They really introduced me to the science space at a very young age.

So I was super lucky with that. That's awesome. Yeah. When, uh, so you meet all those kids through, or all those people through high school. What, when you first walk into Louie, do you feel like you're pretty confident to go have that conversation with him and like act like you know what you're talking about in strength and conditioning? I was scared shitless.

When, when you first keep in mind, like when you walk into, have you been to Westside? No. He's been there four, five, six, seven times. When you walk into Westside, it's not a normal gym. Like, when I went, there was no sign on the door. They send you the address, and you're in, like, this industrial park. It's just like – it's a garage. I don't think I've ever pulled up to Westside, by the way,

without Louie standing in the parking lot with his shirt off. And someone's, like – someone's got a wheelbarrow that has like 600 pounds in it, and he never asks us for anything. We just pull up, get out of the car, and he's like, hey, boys, how are you? Come on inside. Go train, go train. That's it.

I've never signed a waiver. Can you imagine if he's signing a high, nice to see you again, and then we just go lift, and he never asks for a thing. He's super open to let people hang out. In case you die die which you might there's a really high probability the only caveat though like you said is that you have to work super fucking hard or you're not allowed in there that's the thing is no one can go there and not train like you're allowed to be a guest you're allowed to come he's so profound with that but

if you're going to be there you can't just watch like you have to train if you're going to be there and uh he's he's the nicest guy he's like a father to me one of the nicest guys he like took me out to lunch and dinner every day every day i was there um asked to answer all my questions i'll never forget like he he's he's crazy though like he's out of his mind oh yeah he doesn't live in the real world and i'll never forget one day one day this guy came in he i don't know where he was from but he traveled across the country to come and train at west side and uh it was deadlift day so he was like yeah we're at the thing let's go like and the guy is like he's a big guy he's jack like he clearly lifts and so he's like all right nice

so he sits down you know like he can't believe he's there and he takes uh he opens his bag and he starts like putting shin pads on start like duct taping shin pads and louie's like the fuck are those he's like this guy's like shin pads i don't like the the bar to scrape my shins and louie's like get the fuck out and he kicked him out he's like this is west side you're not he's like you're gonna bleed on the bar you bleed on the bar that was it we'll throw chalk on it yeah kicked him out because he wanted to put shin pads on so when you walk into west side it is it's another world yeah it's super intense it's super intense so i was 127 pounds.

Brendan Lilly was training there at the time. And I remember he was like, I'm going to be honest, man. I thought you were a cross-country runner. I didn't think you were a powerlifter. So I was completely open to just like, listen, you teach me whatever. I'll listen to whatever you say. And Louie walked up to me. And we were having our first meal.

And Tony Bologna is sitting next to me. He's 330 pounds and uh and Louie looks at me and he's like looking just like looking at me like that's not saying anything and uh and all of a sudden he's like those are cute and he looks at my elbow it's like these are cute and so every day he made me do 300 band press downs his big thing so you have to have big elbows so you won't be strong I have big elbows he's like look he grabs my elbows these are cute were you eating mcdonald's breakfast every morning with the crew no it's bob evans bob evans bob evans exactly right and then for lunch

you go to manelli's manelli's or that pizza place but yeah exactly so yeah that's funny you said that number 300 because louis said that to me one time too i came in he was like go to 300 hamstring curls i actually didn't know if he was joking i was like you second go you just told me to do like like locked out straight leg like wide stance doing like straddle where your feet are like four feet apart um locked out deadlifts for singles and then you just told me to go 300 is that on a band i didn't know if he was like on the machine with a band 300 i mean jesus what do you do you just go nuts laying on the ground down there yeah it's great no yeah he does for the hamstring curls, he recommends that to everybody.

He's like, yeah, you could do it with a, he has these big boxes with these, like, foam boxes. Like, you put some ankle weights on, you put some ankle weights on, you sit down and do, like, 300. Like, don't you have work to do? I would be bored by, like, 75. Don't you have things to do today? But then he'll take, he'll do, you know, like chains, like ropes, like battle ropes. He'll take huge chains, like massive, massive metal chains and go outside and do them for 30 minutes straight. And his hands will be bleeding.

It's like, you're out of your mind. Is there a big education system? Is he teaching the system to you as you're working out in there throughout the summer? So, yeah, it was unbelievable. Basically, it was you train in the morning. You train from like 8 a.m to 10 a.m and then the way he did it for me is i would go from training into his office and then he would give me these books whatever books there were there and he'd be like that's what you're gonna read so i'd read and then he we'd go out to lunch and then we'd go back and train for the afternoon session and after that i just asked him questions

on what i read and then at the end of summer i took the certification course so it's literally all just like one-on-one just he wanted to and those he loved it he's just like i'll answer any question you have so when you were running the powerlifting team at delaware do you come back the next year and like i was revamped the whole say you're like a yeah i was don't worry guys i know louis i was we're all gonna be stronger. I was this close to staying on Westside. The only reason I didn't is because Louie was like, you got to go back. Everyone in Westside, AJ Roberts, all those guys were like, you got to stay.

Fuck school. Quit. And Louie was like, the reason I took you on is because he's like, I'm all tatted up. I've been in prison. I can't speak at schools. They don't want me to speak. I'm not a good guest speaker. Kids, meet Louie.

Louie's like, motherfucker. He doesn't kill people, but it sure looks like it. He was like, I want you to go back, get a degree, and be able to teach this to people. He was the only reason I went back. I was very close to staying at Westside. You get caught up in it. We all know AJ. I trained with AJ as soon as he

got out of Westside. Our gym was the first one he went to. Oh, really? Yeah, it was crazy. When he showed up, it was 300-something crazy fucking pounds. He was on Westside on him. Westside across his back, the dog, the whole thing. It was like, where have you been?

Welcome back to society, bro like let's go get a hamburger let's talk about like how the laws work of life like this is like i feel like aj did it right though like he did great all the way to the world record and then was just like i'm out like i'm gonna fucking die if i keep doing this any longer i'm done and he just he just quit cold turkey yeah that culture though is a real like anytime I look at the really good power lifters and I'm like, if I have to have a nosebleed in the middle of lifting, I just don't want to go there. Like, you have to bring that back.

And that stuff happens every day in his place. That has to be what you love. It has to be, like, what makes you happy in every sense of the word. And Louis, his wife would be right there. And he would be like, and he'd be telling everybody, he was like, I told my wife before we got married, power of things first, you're second. It's just like, and he's super open about it.

It's like respect being so transparent. But if he wasn't power of things, he'd be dead. That's what keeps him alive. Were you taking a lot of those lessons and getting them on your blog, I guess, at the time? What would your website look like? My website was awful. It was terrible. Well, was terrible well of course it was your first one but like what what was the information that you were putting out was a powerlifting specific blog

yeah so a lot of it actually a lot of it was west side specific obviously that's what i'm like yeah with but it was a lot of like because louis articles a lot of times they don't make sense yeah you read it and he contradicts himself 17 times in one article so what i did is a lot of my articles seo like number one for like West Side Barbell Conjugate Method, how to actually break it down, the maximal effort method, dynamic effort method. And I didn't know what SEO was. I was just like, let me just write this out so people can understand it. Who knew a search topic could be please decipher Louie Simmons? Help.

No one understands. Exactly. So that was like a lot of my content then and then when i went to cressy several months later then it started to train a lot of anatomy a lot of physiology um a lot of just like functional training a lot of technique stuff and so it's cool to have them both but i think eric probably puts those two types of training together but in anybody he takes them like the unbelievable high level powerlifting and also also the science of movement and anatomy and physiology. And he combines them into, like, he has baseball players deadlifting 500, 600 pounds.

It's like, that's crazy. Yeah. That's insane. Do you remember why you started your website? Yeah, actually, I do. So what happened was I followed this guy named JC Dean, and he had a website at the time, JCD Fitness. He was a big mentor to me. And when I was at Westside, I didn't really

tell anybody, but he was like, hey, where are you? I was like, I'm at Westside Barbell. He's like, for what? I was like, and I told him. And he was like, we got to get your website. I was like, well, I don't know how to make a website. So he literally bought my domain name, got my website, and just sent me the information. He was like, now this is transferred to you. And I was like, what do I do with this? He was like, write. I'm like, what do I write? He was like just, and literally his advice was just make good content to help people. Like that's it. Yeah.

That's what I did. And I put out at least one article a week every week for three years straight. Yeah. There's like a, even talking to Tony yesterday, there's like a really core group of people like 15-ish years ago that sat down. And because there was only like three websites, like bodybuilding.com, you could buy a template. And then T Nation.

And that was one of the reasons why I was instantly drawn to CrossFit was like they put out cool videos. And I can watch training montages all day long. It's like what I'm best at is watching workouts. And that's how you just like absorb movement and understanding how to build a program um like those early days there was just so little content and which is i mean now we have a video here we've got podcasts everybody's got this stuff um when you when you're in cressy hanging out with cressy and tony gentlecore like do they bring like a i don't want to say louis not

professional by any means because he's the best in the world but like there's like a polished nature to kind of not professional yeah he'll say yeah there's like uh yeah if you could be the guy that can go into academia and speak about it right um cressy and tony are very polished we'll call it um is what's the contrast going from a place like west side and then showing up at hanging out with those two guys well it's sort of like it's like culture shock it's probably sort of the same way i'm sure that aj was just like in a very different world when he comes hanging out with you and it's like coming from west side because west side is in the middle of nowhere ohio yeah and there's nothing around and your entire life is just west side that's

everything all you eat sleep that's west side when you get out of that it's sort of odd like i remember this i remember going to into cressy and i was like really super into powerlifting like i was like this is all i think about this this is it and cressy had recently stopped competing and i was i was 21 at the time and i was just like this is all i can think about i remember being eric why did you stop competing and he was like well one day you'll get to a point in which you'll realize that powerlifting is only going to take you so far and you'll realize that probably your business is more important and that competing and powerlifting and setting more records isn't going to do anything better for your business or helping more people and in that moment I vividly remember being

like he doesn't know what he's talking about and then maybe two years ago i wrote him and i was like hey just want you know i remember this conversation we had uh thank you this is what i was thinking and you were right because now like i'm in a very i think when you had that realization though did you did you think if i hadn't have talked to him would you be like doubting yourself and questioning like why like why am i not like why is that fire not there anymore something wrong with me am i not good enough like whatever else like but he said this was going to happen so now you know it's normal well even with that conversation i still had those emotions it was very odd i think a lot of times we get stuck into our training methodology is like

well this is what i do it's like a lot i'm a crossfitter i'm a powerlifter i'm an olympic lifter and it's like anything outside of that realm it's like is it should i be doing this is that all right? So I definitely had that feeling. But because that conversation was there, I sort of had that to cement me and be like, okay, no, that's definitely the right move for sure. It's also nice kind of being in Westside too. Like I remember the first time I met AJ and I was like, hey, we're going to squat a little bit today. And he squatted 405 for like eight.

And I was like, okay. A little bit is a different like we have to have a better language uh understanding of like what a little bit means right you don't need to squat anymore but a 405 is like an entry level squat for you like cool keep your hips warm like let's let's work on losing 100 pounds now like we don't need to work on strength for anyone that doesn't know aj roberts he squatted over Yeah, that's a third of what he could squat. Yeah, a third of 40% of his squat.

No big deal. It's a light day under the bar. Percentage-wise, it's nothing. When they walk out 405 at Westside or with AJ, it sits on their back the same way like an empty barbell sits on yours, and you're like, that's burying me from the time I get underneath it and

like get it off the pins and they just like they could just like walk a mile well they can't walk a mile but they could walk out to the door and back with that weight on their back like it's a terrifying thing but that makes the process a lot easier when you actually see what the best is yeah and you go there one thing cool about business is like you can always get better at business at some point at some point you hit your genetic potential and you go what do i have to do from here and the road is never pretty yeah exactly i mean it's you get to a certain point it's like what else am i gonna have to sacrifice yeah like especially with high level power fighters like that you don't see any of them who just aren't in pain all the time it's really unhealthy sport i mean i realistically

i don't know any sport taken to the ultimate highest level that isn't unhealthy yeah anything and like it's just not you take like baseball pitchers it's like their shoulders are wrecked yeah like that's just not good for your shoulder to do that over and over and over again for years and years and years it's like a hundred percent of major league baseball players have a labrum terror right exactly it's like a%. It's a ridiculous number. And now I think it's even worse for, like, football players. Like, every one of them. I mean, you suffer more than three concussions, they say.

Yeah. Pretty high chance of getting, you know, either early on-site Alzheimer's or something along those lines. Yeah. So you're looking at brain damage and shoulder. Yeah. It doesn't matter what your sport is. Car wreck.

Always. 50 times. Especially for the power't matter what your sport is. Car wreck. Always. 50 times. Especially for the powerlifters, like the, the super heavy guys. Once, once you can just be as big as possible, that's a,

that's a radically different game than you have a weight class. You have to stay within your weight within a certain range. Now you're just like, now it's a competition who can eat more. Like I can eat the most, you're talking about eating 10,000 calories. Like if you had to do that every day to be like as maximally big as possible all the time like your health is gonna fucking yeah what were you eating back in the day where do you remember was it like walking around uncomfortable all the time no no i personally

because everyone aj uh brandon lilly all these guys they wanted me to get bigger because the powerlifting dogmas get bigger louis the only one who was like i don't want you to get bigger because i want you to compete lightweight and that was one of the reasons why he wanted me to come because i was very strong for my weight so i ended up my best pull was 535 at 132 and so bro pulled four times body weight and that was like he was like i want you to pull i want you to be like super strong and lightweights because i think part of it was because he gets called out on only coaching big guys so he was like i want to show the world that I can coach a little guy too. But so for me, I wasn't going crazy eating.

But I'll never forget this one conversation I had with Tony Bologna. Tony Bologna, 330 pounds. And it's hard for me to like really explain this. Number one, he's like constantly purple on the face. Like legit purple. And every day you go into the gym and before the first training session he's eating a dozen crispy creams every day like a dozen crispy creams i remember being like what else do you eat are you paleo but so he's a dozen crispy creams and then we go out

he gets a full like a whole entire manelli's pizza to himself and then near the end of the pizza he looks at his watch and he's like oh i'm meeting your friend for sushi you gotta go and this is all before noon like it's just like his whole day is made of lifting or eating it wouldn't make anybody else nauseous yeah it's like just as a full-time job it's unbelievably expensive too how much food you're eating this is crazy and he broke down one day like he's like no if you're doing it all like fast food it's pretty easy and he broke it down based on like whether it was kfc or whatever like all this stuff and that's where they live in ohio it's like you can't drive five minutes without going past like if you you've been like you're on the highway you see like

fast food fast food fast food fast it's all over so i mean it's waffle house everywhere every egg yes it is talking about going to fast food places like every time they would pass one that's like kind of like their home base they would just stop and get something just because like they happen to be close they would get like 30 burgers just like bags of burgers and that's actually one of dave tate's most popular articles on t nation is like his getting i don't know if you read this this is one of the most popular articles he ever wrote, his article on how he was trying to get as big as possible and there was this like,

he made a joke out of it but it was super funny where he was like, I don't know what weight he was stopped at but he was like, I was trying to get bigger, I was trying to get bigger,

I couldn't get bigger and this guy, this like one like mysterious guy at Westside was like, I know what you gotta do. Every night you gotta go home. You gotta order a large pizza and you gotta dump olive oil

on that pizza. And then after that, you got to get the most MSG-filled Chinese food you can get. He's like explaining all this. He was like, and if you do that, you're going to gain weight. And he was like, and it worked. And I gained weight. It's just like the dogma.

You just want to get as big as you can. As many calories as possible. It's just not healthy. So what were you doing in there, though? Was Louie teaching you nutrition? Is he like, okay, well, here's your actual macro breakdown. We've got to keep you around 135 because you're the strongest one in the world. But let's talk about your 40-40-20 today.

No, I didn't listen to anyone's nutrition. Alan Aragon, Martin Burke, and Lyle McDonald, I was big on reading their stuff. I was like, teach me strength. Teach me how to get strong. That's what I want. And so they would all – Brandon Lee, he laid out a whole meal plan for me, which was just like – Why were you looking for all these people?

I feel like when I was in college, I wasn't looking for these – I was doing bro splits because that was like in the magazines. I wasn't trying to find the scientist guy. Well, how old are you? Right now? 27. Oh, yeah. I guess, yeah, that changes things a little bit. Yeah. was like in the magazines i wasn't trying to find the scientist guy well how old are you right now 27 oh yeah he's i mean i guess yeah that changes things a little bit yeah because i mean our age yeah i mean 30s 40s it was just like oh you got the encyclopedia of bodybuilding oh yeah that's that's all we had like i didn't yeah the i was really lucky because when i started wrestling

one of my coaches um he was super into intermittent fasting. And he was, like, really into this stuff. So I started intermittent fasting when I was, like, 16 for the first time. And so then I started to get really into it just because other people that were older than me were teaching it to me. And then I started, basically, I learned how to Google really early on. And I started, like, researching this stuff. And I was, like, so much of this stuff that I'm being taught. So you had Google. We didn't. But really we didn't but really it's a big 10 years

was that in combination with cutting weight for wrestling you're intermittent fasting and cutting weight at the same time they kind of play together yeah but it was funny because i would do stupid stuff too i would do a lot of stupid stuff in terms of i would do intermittent fasting but then i would like go sit in a sauna for four hours or like do like Bikram yoga just so I could sweat out tons of weight and like put the trash bags on and like like right before weigh-ins or just like all the time right before weigh-ins like 24 hours before but I mean when you're in high school wrestling you compete sometimes two or three times a week a dual meet and then like a big big tournament during the weekend or something so right cutting weight water weight at least two

times a week for the entire season and then if you make it into the like the postseason the states and everything then it goes on even further it's just it's a mess right yeah it's similar to high school wrestling and if i'm in may for a long time do jiu-jitsu even to this day that's awesome and uh some people the reason i asked that is like they put on the trash bags and whatnot like at practice i'm like you're not weighing in you don't need to do that right now like you only need to do the water thing right before you get on the scale the rest of the time it's a total waste exactly yeah and i mean for whatever reason high school they just they don't know what they're doing they have no idea like they don't know what they're teaching the coaches are just doing what they've done and they're pe teachers most of the time yeah i just kind of found it it's so funny i tell people the

story all the time i didn't learn how to clean until I got into CrossFit because in high school and college, my coaches were like, all right, just get it up to your head. And I had to learn how to clean by, you know, nursing. I did cleans for shoulder day. Yeah. Like that's not even remotely what's supposed to happen. I was going to say, you got lucky early on because here you are, like, learning how important it is to do leg days.

I didn't start doing leg days until I was, like, 25. Yeah. It was like, we're not benching today. I'm out of here. I remember, yeah, I actually always did legs just because I played hockey. But that was, like, a topic of conversation. Like, do you do legs? Yeah.

Like, if somebody asked me that now I'd be like do you even show up like I don't understand right isn't everything legs how do you walk like what are you doing why did you go to the gym how do you I don't get it like we've gotten past that point now but listen I mean I'm sure Gary could tell you this too being from jersey it's like you only did shoulders back there's no point in doing anything else jersey sure you got shorts on maybe an occasional calf raise just where you can see in the board so at some point you transitioned from competing

in powerlifting to coaching yeah so then basically it was sort of uh it happened at the same time so as i was doing powerlifting what happened was this i was super light competing at 132 doing really well especially with the deadlift and so in my mind from west side i was like i only want to coach powerlifters but what happened was at that same time that i was doing really well powerlifting for women started to get really big and a lot of women were like this guy's pretty small and he deadlifts a lot of weight and like a lot of these women they're like i don't want to get bigger but i want to do a lot of weight and get stronger so i started getting a lot of women clients being people like hey could i work with you i want get stronger. I don't want to get bigger.

So it sort of worked in conjunction at the same time. And sort of like first it was like my powerlifting was first and then clients. But then it sort of shifted to the point where eventually it was clients first and my powerlifting came second. Why do you think that happened? Why did that shift happen? Basically just because I remember that right after I hit four times bodyweight. That was my goal. My goal for the time I was like 18, 19. I was like, I want after I hit four times bodyweight. That was my goal. My goal for the time I was like 18, 19, I was like, I want to deadlift four times bodyweight.

So I first started deadlifting. And so once I hit it, I remember in the competition I put the bar down. And I was like, I'm done. Did you untie your shoes and leave them up there? No. Could have been so good on social media. Yeah. That's it.

We can just reenact it right here if you want. We've got camera guys to take a picture real quick. Load up the bar. I'm retiring, guys. Basically, I was like, I'm done. I felt my body just like, it wasn't good. It wasn't good. And fortunately, I got out of it unscathed.

I was fine. But it's a lot on your body, pulling that much of my weight. You do it every day. Sooner or later, you break. and it just became more important to me i was like i was seeing how much impact you can have on how many people you can help whether it's a social media website email list whatever just like and the impact for me was just way more rewarding at that point than pulling 4.2 times by 4.5 times it's just it gets to a point where it doesn't even mean it doesn't even matter it's like yeah then you pull four times and then 99.99% of people don't even know what that

means. I could say I did the 300 or I did the 500 and they don't, like they don't know the difference. We think it's cool. Right. You guys think it's cool. Most people, they're like,

what's the deadline? Yeah. So where are we eating dinner tonight? So you're a bodybuilder? Yeah. Like that's what most, and so it's like, listen,

it doesn't even matter. How does that change your coaching though? When,'ve kind of getting gotten to that point you wake up and you're kind of beat to shit like that's a one of the things with crossfit like in the competing side of it to me where it was like man if i really want people to be great at this like how do i change the message so that they don't wake up broken as shit like I did. Yeah, I mean, basically, what it came down to was most people weren't going to put in as much effort. They weren't going to dedicate their entire life to it. I literally didn't miss a training session for five years.

That's just all I wanted to do. And so I think if you're smart about it, and this comes from a lot of the stuff I did with Cressy, but if you're smart with your warm-up, you're smart with your training, you're smart with your nutrition, you're not doing it, and this comes from a lot of the stuff I did with Cressy, but if you're smart with your warm-up, if you're smart with your training, you're smart with your nutrition, you're not doing just outrageously excessive maximum effort training all the time. You can do it without being in ridiculous pain.

But I think at a certain point, if you make the transition from this is a hobby to this is what I want to do for my, this is what I'm going to do, to a high-level sport, I don't think there's any high-level athlete in any sport who doesn't get injured at some point yeah they have to yeah i mean once you're competing it's not necessarily about health anymore you want to be healthy but if it's your career and you want to keep going in your career and not have to get a different job then you have to win at some point and so a little pain comes along with job and that's that's i think a lot of people get that confused it's it's the difference between like yeah i going to run a 5K just because I want to participate in the 5K and get better

versus, like, I want to compete in 5Ks and I want to, like, try and do better than everybody and, like, make it consistent. Like, the competition aspect just changes everything. I watched a great panel last night about people talking about what is the difference between health, wellness, fitness. Like, what are your goals? What are you trying to do? Because I feel like a lot of people have been bit by the fitness bug these days. Everybody's like, well, I want to compete in a race. Like, I've done multiple marathons in Ironman.

Everybody's like, well, how are you going to do? I go, I'm just looking to finish it. I'm going to have a beer at mile 13 and celebrate halfway. I'm not going to be passing some kenyan guy being like no white lightning i'm just like looking at you and there's a lot of people who are like i want to be a faster runner i'm like at 45 or 35 you know you can't really you're not gonna imagine you get so fast that you could race that right you know so it's managing people's expectations a lot of times. That's exactly right.

Yeah. I remember I had one client who actually stole my client to stay online. And you read an article that someone wrote about powerlifting. And the whole article was basically like, you can't powerlift and not have serious injuries. And he wrote me. He was super nervous. He was like, I'm powerlifting with you. Is this going to happen?

And I was like, no, man. You're going to be fine. Again, it's like how much you want to go into it. You don't have to worry about that. People fear the titles. If you say weightlifting, it's going to scare people. CrossFit, scare people. Powerlifting, scare people.

You're just being like, just come in. Just don't tell them anything. Don't put a label on fucking anything. And just tell them, hey, listen, this is what we're going to do. Yeah. They feel like they have to buy into whatever Matt Frazier thinks CrossFit is. Like it could be a broad spectrum of you being healthy, but his version is just a little more crazy than everyone else's. Did you ever feel like you were going to be going down the baseball route,

hanging with those guys at Cressy's? When I was there, I was much more interested in like the science of coaching, the science, like the physiology than I was the actual baseball side. Yeah, I did. I played baseball as a kid growing up. But I wasn't that the thing about like, especially with at Cressy, and one of the one of the best things he ever told me, he was like, when you're coaching high level athletes, like baseball, million dollar contracts, he was like like the goal isn't necessarily to get them better the goal is to keep them healthy and so that changes your mindset as a coach a lot and so for me it was not as fun it's like you're just sort of managing them making sure they don't get

hurt make sure they don't do stupid stuff because they're like they're young ball players that's that is literally like the thing that keeps coming up when we interview like really smart people that are around great athletes all the time. And it's like, well, where's your role? Like you want them to be really strong and really fast and like you're the strength coach. And they're like, that guy's a freak. That guy's barely like he doesn't need me to be in the big leagues. Like he's going to be in the big leagues no matter what.

I just want him to stay healthy. Like let's get out of their way. If you take the starting pitcher for the Red Sox and you're like, you've got to PR your snatch and he fucking hurts his wrist and now he can't throw anymore, the GM is going to fucking ax you immediately. You're screwed. You're done.

I think when I first started coaching, everybody was like, I mean this was ten years ago, everybody was like, well, I want to train high-level athletes. It's just a maintenance phase. That's all you're really doing with them and even that they're probably the laziest ones because they're like i'm fucking good i really didn't work out it's true yeah they don't you don't really realize that though until you're around them right like if you as soon as you see one like alignment in the nfl it's like, I know what you do for a living. You're not qualified for anything else except to make less space for people to run through.

That's why you're here, to block people. I think it's the most fun age group to coach is high school, not even college guys because at college you're like, I can't let this guy get hurt. High school kids, like it's all about the passion. They're there to learn. They're there to grow, and they haven't really came into their own yet. So that's the place where it'd probably be the most fun to teach a sports team.

For sure. I was going to say, you said that baseball players are kind of on a maintenance phase, especially in season, and that's totally true. Like I started reading Tony stuff and Eric stuff back when I was going to say, you said that baseball players are kind of on a maintenance phase, especially in season, and that's totally true. I started reading Tony's stuff and Eric's stuff back when I was doing a season with the Colorado Rockies as a strength coach. And in season, they play every day for like six months straight. They play every day. You get a Monday off like every three weeks.

The only guys that are really working super hard are the starting pitchers because they throw, and then they have four days off before they throw every five days. So those guys work super hard. But the guys that are playing in the field, like the second baseman who plays every day like he's not trying to destroy himself he just needs to do like a little bit so like he doesn't lose the strength and speed and power that he gained in the offseason those were some of the coolest programs that i watched what i used to do eric has all his programs like on a wall just and i used to just take them all off and i would read them and uh the coolest programs that i found were the ones like

that were the in-season maintenance programs because the volumes and intensities were completely different like it was completely different than any off-season training all the off-seasons training is like all right trying to get them back up to the point trying to get them stronger more powerful everything the in-season maintenance stuff was like way less it was way less work way less volume way less intensity and uh it was actually way less volume but the intensity would creep up occasionally and i was like what's going on and so he explained it and then that's what was super interesting to me because you have these high level players playing almost every day and i was like when are they going to do the workout he's like after the game

yeah it's like they and that's like again these are young guys like they're like they want to go out and they want to party whatever it's like the most committed ones are going to then go after this long game, go to the gym, do, like, two sets of trap bar deadlifts, a couple things else, a couple things else, like 30, 45 minutes. But, like, that type of manipulation of training is really interesting. I think I remember Boyle saying that when he was with the Red Sox that the only people he was, like, actually coaching were the people that were injured.

And that was because they trained during the game. So he got to spend three hours with them just hanging out, watching the game. Then he'd be able to actually work his magic on people. And everyone else is like, what are you going to do? Big poppy? You've got to lose some weight, buddy. That guy just has to run 90 feet. He's either out or he hit a dinger.

There's no in-between with him. So what is he going to do? Get on the ladder. We've got to work on some agility. It's not going to work. But you started online training pretty early in your career, right? Yeah, when I was 20, 21. And this is so different because nowadays everyone wants to be an online coach.

Everyone wants to go on Instagram and start an online business. When I started writing this stuff on Facebook and my website and YouTube, I didn't know online coaching was a thing. I didn't know I was going to start a business. So I was fortunate from the perspective of a lot of people don't make it in their online business because everything is done with the intent to make money on something. And when they don't make money on it, then they stop because they think it's not working. And so I put out content for a long time, very consistently, before that was even an option.

And then I was like, oh, cool, this is great. But I didn't do it with that intent, which sort of made it much easier for me to succeed because I wasn't expecting anything in return. What's your opinion on a lot of these online coaches now? You came from a world where it wasn't really as relevant as it is now. Now everyone has an online program. It's an issue. I think it has a lot of opportunities. I think it's great.

For me, I come from the world of you coach in person first, online second. Coaching you in person will make you a better online coach. Coaching online will not make you a better in-person coach. And I think a lot of people are getting into online coaching not because they love coaching or because they love the science, but because they think, oh, this will be easy. They think it will be a great way to make money. And I love working out too. And that sets up a lot of issues. So it's a little bit of a problem, but like.

How long were you putting out content before you actually took on a client online? I was putting out content. I would say because I took clients for free and I took like a lot of family and a lot of high school college like roommates and stuff relatively quickly but my first paying client

I remember was a woman from Brazil she paid 300 bucks for a 12 week program that was about like a little over like a year into my online like

putting stuff out every week yeah I think the first time I ever trained somebody online was just like friends yeah

assholes asking for free advice all the time yeah like just shoot me a video because i know you move like crap i but you explaining it's not getting it done and then you start getting enough videos like oh and people are doing this for real and then you can actually kind of take everything online but right yeah the everyone's got one now well that's the thing i mean i have a new client that I've been seeing here, and he's like, just send me some program. Hold up, burn your mouth.

I go, okay, I'll send you some program. Do you know what the fuck you're doing? Could you even squat the right way? He comes in here, and I'm like, you can't even, I wouldn't even put you underneath a boy belt. So there's so many people who are like, you know, putting that shit out there. I'm like, this is the most generic. But people are buying it.

I mean, it's like anything else. That said, though, I was talking to my buddy, Mike Vacanti. He was Gary's coach before me. And he has a great online coaching business, too. Because a lot of people are like, aren't you nervous? It's such a saturated industry now. And Mike and I always laugh because we're like, no, because most people suck. Most of the coaches, they don't know what they're doing they're not giving their clients attention they're

not looking at technique videos they're not actually helping them they give them a generic program and that's it and it's like the thing about coaching is it's much more about the relationship you have with the client than it is necessarily always about the program and they don't know how to create a good relationship they don't know how to foster that because it comes from learning and experience and so we were always like no we're not nervous just because these people who are doing it from the from instagram well the ease of entry like matters a lot in the coaching business right like it's you have if you're going to do it in person you actually have to go get a job like there has to be a process and i something that is really

interesting kenny and i think that you'll be able to vibe on this and how you hire people here. But when I talk to people like you, Tony, Boyle has this massive internship process where the best coaches in the world are coming out of it. A lot of times there isn't an internship process. It's like you got a cert and now you can go. But in person, you still have to have the confidence to go in and apply. Online, you don't. You still have to have the confidence to go in and apply yeah online you don't you just have to be cool like that's there's a huge difference between sitting down with the gym owner that knows what the hell is going on and having that conversation because just in the

conversation you can sit there and be like oh this guy doesn't have a clue like he doesn't speak the gym language he's only been at this two years and just hasn't been in it like right you just don't know but online you can just turn your thing in it. You just don't know. But online, you can just turn your thing on. It looks super exciting. God, I can't wait to do some box jumps with that guy. It's so exciting. We're all going to lose weight.

It's going to be great, 30-day challenge. But in person, you've got to show up. Do you have people walking in here where it's just like? I've had 100 people, whether it's reaching out to me on social media or coming through the door being like hey i just want to coach here you know a great way to figure out if you want somebody to coach there it's like all right come by tomorrow bring two friends come anytime you want bring two friends i don't know if i could bring two okay just show up with two if you don't have two friends

by the age of 30 you probably have a real shitty person yeah and you probably don't have two friends by the age of 30, you probably have a real shitty personality. Yeah. And you probably don't want them in your gym because no one's going to talk to them. They're probably not going to be that likable person. And I always say that. I mean, that's the first thing I look for is personality. Right. Like, is this person likable?

Because at the end of the day, you know, eventually they get to the point where they could. I mean, I have members here who could probably run my class probably better than me sometimes but it's the relationship that you start to build with them the trust that they have in you yeah like anything else i mean i say it all the time like you listen to certain podcasts because you trust their recommendation you trust what who they have on what they believe in um the things that they're doing um you know it's the same as a coach you know if i tell some of these people all right jump through the window rob that car down the street they'd be like all right should i break

the window so that's the type of relationship you build with people over time but if they can never break through that wall if they never get a chance to meet you because you are not that type of person then there's no point putting you in front of a room 100 yeah uh when did you stop taking on are you is gary your only client now he's my only in person yeah yes when did you stop taking the majority of your your in-person stuff um so what happened was i was in boston so basically when i was working in Boston I was building my online business after I finished college after I finished college moved back to Boston was working online actually helped open a gym in Boston and then that I was like that was while I was working

towards four times and building my online and then after a certain point I realized online there's just so much more potential for it so went fully online in june of 2015 i believe it was and then i moved to israel and i was living in israel for a while and then when i was in israel that's when i got the opportunity to work with gary so moved from tel aviv to new york and then i've been with gary ever since so from may 31 2016 was my first day with gary and so now it's just been gary as my only in-person client and everything else is online. Do you miss having a full slate of people? No.

I liked coaching. I like coaching a select group of people. Select people that I like absolutely. They love it. They're super intense about it. They're like, that's what I like coaching. I think what a lot of coaches struggle with and what I is, when you have coaching for 10, 12-hour days, and there are like two to four clients

who will make one hour seem like 12 hours. 12 hours. And that's why I think there's such a high burnout rate in this industry. One of the reasons is because it's just like super long days, and you want to work with who you want to work with. Yeah, it was part of that shift because you were kind of leaving powerlifting,

and then you get into a world where it's like gen pop is sometimes very basic of just basic movement principles and trying to have fun for an hour. You know, what's funny is I didn't have a problem with gen pop. I actually really liked gen pop. My issue was just like, there are some people in gen pop

who work insanely hard. Yeah. Like there are some people in gen pop who go hard and I like that. It was like you're talking about the best population is high school athletes like high school athletes and then generally women between like 28 to 50 because they go so hard yeah yeah they'll do whatever girls are really cool to coach they're my best to coach yeah yeah a lot of guys like get super ego driven by the weight you try and tell them lower the weights their technique is better,

and they get pissed off. They don't really listen to the rest periods. Women go hard. It doesn't matter if it's gen pop or powerlifting or whatever. I just like people who like to work hard. That's really it. I said I have this hybrid of women here at this gym because I've weeded out the weak.

I'll curse. I'll yell. I'll scream. And if they stay around, they're the coolest group because they want to go hard they want to listen to like metal music and pick up heavy shit not to the point where you're like oh my god i'm gonna blow my back out but they're interested in going that next step yeah you know and i i don't want that general population where they're just showing up to take pictures and fucking instagram and tell everybody they went to the gym they want to show're just showing up to take pictures and fucking Instagram. Exactly. And tell everybody they went to the gym. They want to show up.

Yeah. Barely do they take pictures and stuff because it's more about what they're accomplishing. And I love that. Yeah. I think that's what keeps the day going. How are you structuring a lot of your programs now? So, it's so funny. Most of my programs, they tend to follow a very like Cressy build,

but also depending on the person there's, there's a lot of West side in there. They, there, a lot of them are conjugated, a lot of them conjugated periodization, but it's, uh,

it's for the individual. So it's, it's based on what they're, where they're at. I do have a lot of linear periodization, but I say, if you could make a combination, a lot of my programming is like

a mix of linear and conjugated periodization um generally three or four times a week um most people come to me they want a deadlift like that's why a lot of people find me they just want to get better deadlifting they love deadlifting they want me to look at their technique they want me to analyze their technique so bigger deadlifts losing fat tends to be like where i come from so it's a lot of a lot of based around that like getting really strong without like feeling like you have to eat a ton that's like one of my most top performing videos and instagram posts is can you get struck can you get stronger without getting bigger until like sort of education on that but basically teaching people how to get really strong without trying to get super big yeah so what are your base

principles for doing that within the programming for? For getting, for getting really, I mean, for someone that just heard you say that, they're like, wait a minute, you can get really strong without getting really big? Like, I want to know how to do that. Like, what are the principles behind how you help people do that? Cool. So number one from the nutrition aspect is like, if you're not eating surplus consistently, you're not going to get bigger. Like that's number one. If you're not eating too much, then no matter what you do training wise, unless you're on drugs, like, you're not going to get bigger. Yeah. Mass has to come from somewhere.

Exactly. Then, as we get, so basically, it starts off with more linear periodization, more just, like, understanding, just getting stronger. As people get better, I like to include more power-focused work. I like to include more dynamic effort work. And it doesn't have to be deadlifts versus bands or versus chains or deficit deadlifts. I do like to do that with more people who are powerlifting focused, compete in powerlifting. But even starting off, like, what a lot of people don't do before a deadlift workout is, like,

anywhere between two to five sets or two to five to five to five, five by five of kettlebell swings. Heavy. Like, for some power work before we get in there. Box jumps. For me, personally, broad jumps I've always found to transfer way better to deadlifts than box jumps. Broad jumping just because you get much more of the horizontal hip action that you would,

and a lot of times box jumps, you won't even fully extend your hips. Box jumps tend to be better for more vertical leap as opposed to broad jump, which is much better for deadlift. So a lot of broad jumps, band-resistant broad jumps, kettlebell swings. I like sometimes hip thrusts, but I tend to save those for the end of the workout just

because hip thrusts... Yeah, more accessory strength, not for the more power-focused work before deadlifting. So I like to do a lot of power-focused, then you go into the strength, and then from there a lot of accessory work, but especially for deadlifting, a ton of hamstrings and glutes, just like rock the hamstrings and glutes. It could literally be like a two-to-one or three to one ham like posterior chain to anterior chain um but then obviously that can actually end up you do that with someone for too long they get some anterior hip pain so if you just focus too much on the posterior not enough anterior so then as they

get better really making sure they get some more quads involved as well but a lot of power focus strength and then you can go super high intensity without necessarily going wicked high volume you don't need that volume because you're not trying to gain some size so i would say reps rarely go above 12 12 15 in the entire program sometimes i will like if they just if they want it i feel like they'll respond well to it from a mental it'll keep them like more engaged but that's usually how it'll go at no point did you say the word conditioning yeah no no do you ever have do conditioning. Yeah. No, not really. Do you ever have – do you add any of that stuff in?

I give optional conditioning, and if I think that the person needs it for their mental aspect, like they want to have that finisher, like feel really good about it or, like, whatever, I'll include it. People love it. Do people still geek out about that just nonstop in here? Like, I need the Metcon. I don't coach it. That's why, why like for this class our hit class yeah i make it more metconny kind of hit style where it's you know short durations

a little longer work period so they can lift a little bit yeah um but some people like can we just do this and they want to do like a 40 minute, can we do a quick burner? What's your quick burner? 35, like, 50 minutes? I'm like, really? How about three wind sprints? Just do that. That's your quick burner? Like, I did a workout today with him. I was like, all right, we're going to go for five minutes.

They're like, come on, really? And I'm like, yeah, that's all you really need. Five minutes. Yeah. Go ham. You really don't need more than that. That's why I make it optional for people. There are some people who will be like, you know, you say optional in every program, but I always do it.

That's awesome. That's great. But there are other people who are like, I tried it once and I won't ever do it again. And it's seven minutes. It's not that much. The conditioning piece seems to, I make the joke, after you retire from powerlifting or whatever, Olympic lifting, CrossFit, like, there's some things that you just stop doing. Like, conditioning tends to be, like, the number one thing.

It's like once or twice a week maybe I'll be doing a very dumbed-down version of a finisher. But, like, stay strong. You'll get 90% of the way there. I think that's what happens. I know for me personally, when you're going up in this and learning more and more, like, you get so obsessed with it. I think that feeling of working hard, you chase that feeling. You chase, like, that stimulus of, like, oh, I'm dead.

It's like, oh, I just got crushed. That's what people say, like, oh, my personal trainer, he kills me. Like, they love to say that. And, like, that feeling of being dead is what they chase rather than the result. But once you realize the result comes from the other stuff, you're like, well, I really didn't like that. I don't need that anymore.

So what do your workouts look like now? Right now, my workouts are, I really don't do any conditioning at all. Actually, that's not true. I did conditioning the other day. General superset counts. Walk slowly to the next barbell that counts i got super into boxing recently because i did i did wrestling for a long time i did brazilian jiu-jitsu for a little bit and i like i really wanted to get some stand-up

games right and that wrecked me cardio wise there's like a huge surprise like cardio boxing is unbelievable from a cardio perspective so i really really like that if I'm going to do cardio conditioning. Right now, it's mainly, I try and work out between four to five days a week. Generally, pretty body part split focus. I just want to take 40 to 60 minutes, really focus on one or two body parts, and then get out

and just feel good. That's pretty much it. Are you still hitting the major lifts? Oh, yeah. Squat stats, press? Yeah, I actually took a long time off. I spent a while just Oh, yeah. Squat stads, press. Yeah, I actually took a long time off. I spent a while just like Gary's schedule wrecked me, destroyed me. Basically, I travel everywhere he goes. If he's in Hong Kong, I'm in Hong Kong. If he's in London, I'm in London.

If he's in L.A., I'm in L.A. And so for the better part of the first two, two and a half years, I spent more time in planes and hotels than my own apartment. So I definitely got pretty chubster yeah pretty chubster yeah i got a question for a guy who's been on the road so much especially gary and stuff you see all these people will make these like in hotel room workouts yeah yeah is there necessarily a need for those like hey let me do 70 room. Doesn't every gym around the fucking world or every hotel around the world have gyms in them? I mean, most of them are decent, but I feel like any major city you go to now has a pretty premier gym that you can go to.

A hundred percent. Yep. And I would say, like, I've been in hotels all over the world. I would say the only area that the hotels didn't consistently have a gym was London. London did not consistently have gyms in their hotels. But there's space nowadays. I mean, I feel like the fitness scene in London is blowing up. I couldn't go one or two blocks without finding a gym.

I will say a lot of people don't want to spend the guest fee pass or whatever it is. But that being said, you don't need to do so many burpees in your room. And I always carry valve slides or like furniture movers bands like you can carry more than enough with you that's super light and get a good workout in if you need it but i'd say 90 of the gyms i stayed or 90 of the hotels i stayed at over the last two and a half years i had plenty of equipment whether it's just dumbbells or something to get a workout in you mentioned putting on a bunch of weight, starting to work with them. Yeah.

Basically, I was like, I was just like, I'm not in the mood to train very much. I was traveling constantly. I was putting a ton of work in my business. Like I was spending a lot of time working on my business and it was like, I don't regret it at all because it paid off big time, but like definitely let my training go to the wayside. So recently in the last i don't know last several months started to pick it up again feeling really good doing really

well um but yeah definitely deadlifting is big for me i don't do too much back squats just because have had some labral issues so if i'm gonna squat it's usually more uh bulgarian split squats but uh but yeah always a big lift right we're gonna take a quick break but we're gonna dig into this g V thing. The life on the road, man. Between Kenny, myself, and Doug, we spend enough time on all the public transportations and traveling around. Nothing what you've been up against. But it's interesting how we get that done on the road and just kind of the relationship you guys have formed with –

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the workout just so i can wear my fiori fact fioriclothing.com forward slash drug save 20 and don't forget to load all your prs into the One Ton Challenge leaderboard for free at theonetonchallenge.com. All the strong people, you've got a new home, theonetonchallenge.com. Welcome back to Barbell Shrug. Dude, thank you for having us at Solace, man. I feel like we have a real home here. And every time we come in, like your trainers are so friendly, easy to look at. Everything's – you got a new name on the walls, though, here.

You like that? Yeah. It's so fresh, man. I'm still waiting to have it backlit. So I got a chick coming in. She's going to backlight the Solace. I love it, dude. Wait, so Solace Strength and Performance,

like why did you add that little addition to Strength and Performance um well here's why uh about five years yeah four and a half years ago when i came on board um they started seeing the the change the trend um that there are people crossfitters and then there are people who want to do crossfit-esque workouts but they're they don't want to pick up a barbell. Yeah. So that's when I launched this program, like a HIIT program and stuff. But this space is very inviting to anybody, and they only had CrossFitters in here.

I was like, let me run this. Let me show people that we're more than just a CrossFit gym, that we could do more. And, frankly, it's another revenue stream. Yeah. And over the years, people have been saying, like, oh, I don't want to come to you. Even friends of mine who I've been friends with for years are like,

I don't want to go do CrossFit. I'm like, you're an idiot. It's not just CrossFit. Just come by, check it out. I think strength and performance is a little bit more palatable for most people, and that's essentially what we're trying to do here. I'm trying to get you stronger in everything we do, whether it's gymnastics or it's weightlifting, powerlifting, crossfit,

whatever it is, we're trying to get you stronger. Yeah. And the performance side is if you want to do crossfit and you want to perform and you want to, like, now that the Open's happening, everybody's like, you know, whose dick's bigger? You know, that's the performance side. You get really good. Do you have a class for that? Man, no wonder you the performance side. You get really good at it.

You have a class for that? Man, no wonder you're so successful. We have a big dick class. We were in the locker room, though. Dude, do you want to hear? I'll tell you a funny story about penises in the locker room. We were at Boston Sports Club two nights ago. Full raging boner.

Dude in the locker room next to us. You're lying. Full raging boner. I saw it. I was actually in eyesight. I was actually in eyesight. And Doug was like, Doug was changing. I was done changing.

We were normal. And I was like, was that a boner over there? Like, I couldn't even believe that there was a boner in my eyesight. I have a question. Who do you think gave him the boner? Which one? It was definitely me. It had to have been. He's checking out. Yeah. He's checking out Doug's boner. I have a question. Who do you think gave him the boner? Which one? It was definitely me. It had to have been.

He's checking out. Yeah. He's checking out Doug's boner. I get it. I thought. It was so strange that there was a boner in my eyesight that, like, we went to dinner and we didn't talk about it. We got back.

I was in bed. It was, like, two hours, two whole hours later, and Doug comes in. He goes, did that guy have a boner? I was like, are you fucking kidding me? I didn't. Yes, I did. I couldn't believe it. I thought I was seeing things like a real boner.

I haven't seen a boner that wasn't mine in so long. I just couldn't believe you're in the locker room. There's a lot of places you can have one of those where it's totally cool. The locker room's not one. I'll tell you what. I worked out up at the Harvard Club before. Yeah. And it's one of those places where it's old rich guys.

And they all walk around with their dicks out. I'm like, what's with this? I get it. I get you're comfortable. But, like. Do you have to? It's some old creepy fucking dude. I think there was a culture in the high school locker room 50 years ago.

It was like your dick had to be, like, full display. Like, it just. If you had a towel on, it wasn't good. You don't have to wear the towel. Yeah. You don't have to cover up your ass. At least cover your dick. Well, this guy could have hung a towel on his dick like it was an ornament.

Like, it was freaking out there, bro. Jordan Syatt, we're going to get back to your life here. I swear. I swear we're going to get back to your life. Isn't that cool? Yeah, dude. So tell me the story here about meeting Gary Vee and how this whole thing happened. Because, I mean, you go from Westside to hanging with Cressy and Gentlecore and doing all this stuff.

You find online training, and then now you've got Gary Vee. Yeah. You've spent a wild ten years of your life. Yeah, it's crazy. And it's actually – it all comes back to Gary's thesis, which is just putting out free content, which is sort of what happened. Basically, I started writing articles and I mentioned his coach before me, which is Mike Vacanti. And so I started writing articles in 2011, I think is when I published my first article. And so when I first started publishing them, no one was reading them. No one except my mom.

I got like 20 views a day. Great job, Jordan. Yeah. Great job. I'd be like five of my views and then whatever and i'd post on facebook but slowly more and more people started to go to my site read my stuff and um anytime someone commented an article i would respond i would always reply and say thank you whatever answer their question and so long story short in 2012 and the comment still there the article the article still there uh mike vicanti who is gary's old coach he was living in uh minnesota at the time he was not a personal trainer at the time he left a comment on my articles and asked a question and i answered it and that was it and he did that several times on several articles on my website in like 2011 2012

2013 and then through a crazy chain of events, he ended up becoming Gary's coach. He ended up becoming a personal trainer, moving to New York, becoming Gary's coach. And then so when his time was up with Gary, Gary was like, who's going to be my coach now? And Mike was like, I think I know a guy. And so then from that, I was living in Israel at the time. Mike reached out to me and then I flew from Tel Aviv

to New York to interview with Gary, do like an hour coaching session with him, then flew back to to tel aviv and then like a month and a half later they offered me the job uh but really it all stemmed from mike finding my articles online leaving comments on it asking questions me responding and that sort of fostered that relationship what were you doing in tel aviv just living like literally i had my online business and i was like i love it here it's fucking amazing yeah like new york but like great weather all year round on the beach yeah so she's like why not well what is working for gary v and tail for you is like how to what what does a week look like is there a normal week there's no normal week i mean it's it's insanity basically like i'll pull out a schedule and a schedule it's

like you wouldn't believe it it's like every minute from like 5 a.m until midnight or 2 a.m is booked like every second everything from working out to showering to driving somewhere like every like every second is booked does he send it to you and be like plug yourself in where you know so he has a schedule that like basically me his assistant and a couple other people are all google calendar on and basically like we just his he has assistant and his assistant has an assistant and so like everyone so you know you got a big swing he was the guy in the locker room so basically i always look at his calendar it's changing constantly but his assistant and i we hop on the phone and plan every two weeks in advance like where i'll be traveling where i'm going so like i book all my flights book all my travel book all that stuff and basically wherever i see a workout is, I meet him there.

So if I know that he's going to be in L.A., I don't talk about it. It's just like I book all my stuff, I go to L.A., and I meet him at his hotel at that time. And, like, he just knows. He'll just be like, meet me in the gym, and that's it. And just, like, wherever he is, I'm there. Sometimes he looks like a wreck. Like he's talking about, like, his hustle,

and I'm like, I don't know if i want to look like that like it's like 3 a.m and you're still grinding and like it doesn't look like you've showered in a week like have you seen your kids i think the uh the thing about gary is he very he's exactly who he says he is like he is like a lot of people like is that is he really like that you know why he's from jersey i mean straight up though he he is like a lot of people put like, is he really like that? You know why. He's from Jersey. I mean, straight up, though, he is. A lot of people put out fake content. A lot of people don't believe him. He is exactly who he says he is.

It's no bullshit. He works harder than anyone I've ever met. I remember when I was living in Israel and everything and I had my online business, I was like, oh, yeah, I work hard. And then you see this guy. It's like, you don't work hard. You'd see a whole new side. And to his credit, what he'll say is he'll always be like, I don't expect anyone to work as hard as me. He's like, I do this because I love it.

He's like, I don't expect anyone to get as little sleep as me, to work as hard as me, to do all this stuff. But it's like, and he's like, I don't advocate it. I just advocate doing what makes you happy. It's really what he does. He's like, if work makes you happy, great. If being with your family makes you happy, great. If this makes you happy, great. But like, yeah, I mean, you can tell he loves what he does because he doesn't stop.

Yeah. It's crazy. Well, you mentioned you putting I mean, you can tell he loves what he does because he doesn't stop. Yeah. It's crazy. Well, you mentioned you putting on a bunch of weight, and now you're traveling. How are you mitigating all this new stress on your body all the time? So it's actually really interesting. When I first started with him, I had stopped powerlifting, and I was just, like, I didn't have a goal. I didn't have a deadline. I didn't have a competition.

And it was the first time in my life since I was wrestling. I always had a competition to train for. I always had something to go for. It was the first time in my life where I didn't have something to train for, a goal to go for. So it was very relatively easy for me. Like, oh, I don't have to get this training session in today. Oh, like I can have this, whatever, this, eat like more shit than I really need. Eat like an asshole, whatever.

And so over time, it just like crept up where i just like gained weight and lost strength and so recently i was like enough's enough and so i really got back in it feeling really good now um but creating these deadlines creating these like mini competitions for myself has been huge for motivation like to keep on track even when i'm traveling because he's like oh it's really difficult while traveling and it's like yeah it's difficult when you're traveling but if you want to make it happen it'll happen yeah and so it's like, oh, it's really difficult while traveling. And it's like, yeah, it's difficult while you're traveling, but if you want to make it happen, it'll happen. And so it's like creating these mini deadlines, mini competitions, creating these mini goals along the way helps me stay motivated to make it happen. When you signed up for this job, was he like, look, I'm going to beat the crap out of you?

Like your life is going to fall apart for a little while. No, basically, no. First of all, when I signed up for the job, I had no idea what I was signing up for. I did not realize how intense it was going to be like mike didn't explain it um basically it was just like yeah it's seven days a week for three years straight and you go where he goes but for example mike didn't tell me that i had to book my own travel i just assumed they would give me a ticket and go so the first trip like literally a first trip i gary's in denver and i was in new york because i didn't go because they didn't book my ticket or anything and i was like okay i guess like it'll just contact

me and so he texted me he's like where are you i was like i'm in new york like why aren't you at the hotel it's like because i didn't get a ticket he's like why didn't you get a ticket so and then so literally we hopped on like a facetime while he was on the treadmill just walking and he was like, yeah, so from now on you meet me where I am always. Like no questions asked. That's where you, that's, that's how it works. Yeah. I was like, got it. But like, I didn't know that going into it.

And for him, it's, he didn't say I'm going to beat the crap out of you. He was like, listen, like I'm your priority. Like you be where I am always. Like that's it. And so that was understood. But it, uh, I think for him, he understands the upside is so much greater. Like the upside is worth it. Yeah.

So it's like it wasn't like I'm going to beat the crap out of you more. Just like let's go. What do you have him doing? It changes a lot. So basically general strength training, getting stronger. His gym in his apartment complex does not have a lot of – it doesn't have a barbell. So I'm not having him do barbell stuff. Sometimes if we eventually have a barbell, he does like to deadlift.

I was going to say, I mean, a guy like him, I mean, can't he just buy a couple barbells? He's got more money. It's like – Rogue Fitness is right – it's on the internet. You can go to it. Where like a $2,000 Alico bar isn't really going to break the bank. So it's interesting. In the schedule, we have an hour every day.

But it's not really an hour. It's like you get in there and I'd say we have like 40 to 45 minutes together. It's like if I'm going to waste seven minutes just loading and unloading the bar, that's a waste. It's not worth it. I would rather have him do dumbbell RDLs or something like that where he's going to get the same stimulus he's not worried about getting yoked no he's not at all literally and when i first started with him he couldn't sit on the right side of an airplane because his neck was so stiff that like he couldn't do this like

literally his neck was so stiff his assistant only booked him left side of the airplane so he could rest his head on the side of the plane um He had horrible hip pain, horrible shoulder. He had, like, torn shoulder. He had labral issues, meniscus issues. He was wrecked. So for me, when I came on, the first thing he said, the first thing he was like, if you can fix my hip, then it'll all be worth it. So fix his hip, fix both his shoulders, fix his neck.

He's in no pain anymore, which is, like, amazing. That's great. That's most important. Do you ever teach a guy like that just to meditate? Just mellow. Ten minutes just sitting still. When we work out, like, he's pretty calm. I think he gets super amped up when the camera's on because that's what he loves.

He's super excited about it. But when we're working out, he's pretty relaxed. He's not going crazy. But, I mean, I think what people see of him online is just, like, this super amped, really hyped up, excited guy. Because this is what he loves. Like he's the most passionate about it. Yeah.

But like when we're in the gym, he's pretty relaxed. I think what's interesting when you're around people like that is like kind of what you said earlier. Like you think you're working hard or you think you're like dreaming big. And then you see the guys that are like actually doing it. And you go, oh, man, I got to reassess all of this. I'm really not working that hard at all. It's like the clients who are like, I don't get it. I'm not losing fat.

I'm working out. I'm eating perfectly. And then you actually have them monitor their daily intake. You actually look at their workouts. You're like, okay, well, you think you're working out four days a week, but you've actually only been working out on average two days a week for the last six months. And then you think that you're eating well, but actually if you look at your weekends, you're binge eating the whole time and you're eating like four days a week but you've actually only been working out on average two days a week for the last six months and then you think that you're eating well but actually if you look at your weekends you're binge eating the whole time and you're eating like 4 000 calories it's like this is why you're not making the progress you think you are because you think

that you're working really hard but you're not and then you actually look at someone who is and you look at their daily schedule and how consistent they are it's like it's mind-boggling yeah do you do all of his nutrition as well yeah yep it's basically so when mike was coaching him mike was much more like all right he was counting his calories and his macros tracking all that for him for me my approach was i don't want you to have to feel like i don't want you to depend on me for your nutrition i want you to learn about it like i want you to know like when you go to dinner what counts his protein what counts his carbs like how much you can eat so he got much more independent with it so that's like

i still like look at his nutrition we still like work on it together but it's much more independent with it. So I still look at his nutrition. We still work on it together. But it's much more of him on an independent basis. Yeah. How often are you guys on the road? Is it every week? Oh, yeah, every week. Nice. I haven't spent a full week in New York here.

Would you say you give him more guidelines as to what to eat rather than a diet? Yes. I would say, yeah, because when I first started with him, what would happen is I would look at where he was going to breakfast or lunch or dinner. And sometimes he'll spend – he'll be at a place for dinner and have four dinner meetings in a row at one place. So it's like, number one, he's just there for four, five, six hours. And everyone else is ordering dinner, but, like, he's not. So I would have to look where he's going and I have to tell him, hey, this is what you're ordering. And sometimes I have to call the restaurant,

like, hey, Gary's going to be there. This is what he has to have. But I didn't like that as a coach because he's not learning. He's not really understanding. So over time, and we have butted heads on this pretty seriously for a while

because he was just like, just tell me what to do. And I was like, I don't want to just tell you what to do. I want you to learn. So there was that little bit of a buddy heads on that, but eventually worked on it, worked on it, where he would take pictures of what he ordered and then send it to me

or I would be there at the restaurant and I'd see what he ordered and we'd talk about it. But at first it was me telling him, and then over time it's been more like him learning how to do it himself. Has he gotten better at it? Go ahead, sorry. He's gotten way better at it. Yeah.

He's gotten way better at it. Before he didn't really know necessarily what foods were protein, what foods were carbs, why he might want to focus on carbs one day or fats another day. He didn't really know it as much. But, like, he would just do it because I made sure it was there. And then over time, like, now he knows. He's like, if we have a light day, if it's more of a rolling or mobility day, he'll be like, all right, I'll keep carbs lower today. Yeah.

Even having had a coach before and probably coaches before the guy that you already mentioned he didn't know what had carbs fats and proteins in it he had an idea he was good and he knows a couple foods like exactly like he'll always use the snickers bar for as an example it's like he knows exactly how many calories are in a snickers bar and he loves saying that but like he had an idea but it's different when you have some consistently doing it for you versus like when you're forced to do it consistently, when you are that one. So I think he had a good idea, and he knew some foods, but not like – for example, he might know an egg is protein, but he might not know the egg is also fat.

So it's sort of understanding that a little bit higher level. Being a super high-energy guy, you watch his videos, you think you couldn't be in the same room with him without him trying to teach you something about business. He would see your business, whatever it is, and just be like, you've got to do this and you've got to do that. He would just be throwing information at you is how I envision it in my head. But is it actually like that? If you guys talk about business, is he just dropping ideas on you left and right? No, he's not.

Occasionally. When I came for the interview with him, I of the things I, because I know Mike and I knew his coach before Mike, and I wanted to ask him, I was like, what was the difference between the two? Like, what did you like, what did you didn't like? And he said, I'll never forget this. He said, the thing about the guy before Mike was he was much more easy to, like, sort of not really work out with because all he had to do was ask asking questions about his business and he would talk about his business the whole workout and not really work out so when Gary would start to ask me questions about my business I'd be like we'll talk about that another time because like it'd be super easy for me to be like yeah let's talk about it like I want to get your insight but that's his way of being like trying to extend the rest period

not really work out and so he would ask me questions and sometimes during the warm-up we'll talk about it but I'm with him over the summers at his vacation house like every day so usually if we're gonna have in-depth talks that happens over the summer uh and occasionally like in passing one thing here one thing there he'll be like hey i saw that post you put up you could do it better this way or that way but it's not like having in-depth talks while he's in the middle of a circuit like it's just you have x amount of 45 minutes. How much could you really talk? Yeah.

Go ahead. I was going to say, how many times do you meet other people, like, in his circle who are fitness enthusiasts? You know, a lot of high-level, you know, big-money guys who are doing what he's doing. Are they enthusiastic about fitness? Because I feel like nowadays a lot of people are jumping on board. Everybody's trying to get enthusiastic about fitness because i feel like a lot nowadays a lot of people are jumping on board they want to everybody's trying to get into the fitness stream you see mark walberg just bought into like f45 and um the dude who plays thor has now got his own thing

so you see a lot of these people with a lot of influence getting into the fitness space who else have you seen who's like oh yeah you know you know, this is cool. I like what he's doing. It's funny. Like I don't necessarily know any like big name people. I mean, I think there's a lot of super famous people who are like Kevin Hart is one of them. Kevin Hart is like big into fitness and he's good friends with Gary and all that stuff. But what I've, the things that I've noticed are a lot of big CEOs, big names, like BC, not necessarily big on social media, but insanely wealthy, just massive, like these huge ceos they email me all the time like hey i want someone like you to do what you're doing for gary for me and so i get a lot of those emails consistently from people just being like hey i run a business i travel a

lot i want something like that so it's very interesting to see like he's changed culture a lot and that's making it very normal for people to have personal trainers that travel with them uh and then also people that travel with a camera around with them too. It's like it's super common to have it now. We got yelled at yesterday for having a camera on us. Really? In BSC, or Boston Sports Club. Dude, it was a wild time.

Boston Sports Club, we had quite an experience for only being there two hours. We had boners, and this girl, this lady was with her personal trainer. She's like, don't take my picture.'re like oh we're not trust me you're not going on the shrug collective instagram page i have a question for you um you know what i find really interesting is like a lot of times if i've done other stuff whether it's with fit aid or reebok they're always like hey could you find us five other trainers or 10 other trainers that we could use for this marketing piece or that thing or this thing and when you start to sift through you're like oh shit i really don't have anybody like who would you who would be on your

top top recommendations of people that you would send to somebody like that because now they're they're an extension of what who you are you know you're like hey i'm vouching for this guy um are you in touch with a lot of trainers or are you kind of always on the road you don't really have i have a list of about two trainers that i would trust with that that's wild right yeah i know it's crazy i've heard there actually be enough people like because there's a lot of trainers but how many are you gonna drop their name really good coaches usually already have pretty good jobs at this point. Yeah. And they would have to get paid a lot of money to leave their job now in order to travel with someone like that.

And the thing with Gary is Gary has an advantage because he doesn't even need to pay a lot of money because there are so many other upsides. But someone else who's just like a CEO, they don't have a big social media presence. You'd have to pay a coach a lot of money to travel with you constantly. Somebody who's worth a shit well one thing i've i've uh kind of noticed about jobs like that too is they seem really cool like oh gary b uh that job kind of sucks like it's not like it's a great job and it brings a lot of value to your life but like when i i see the personal trainer that's like on tour with the band and you're like man you got four sessions a day with the crew and then there's one session with the lead singer and it's like you're on the road every night sleeping in a bus and like i've seen

that stuff and it's not as glamorous as it as it seems people don't understand a lot of people like hold on hold on you train gary one time a day and that's it. And they're like, so you will literally only work an hour a day. Yeah. And I was like, all right, hold on. You have to think about this. Yeah, it's seven days a week. So you don't get vacation.

You don't get weekends. That's number one. It's every day. Then let's say like we're traveling, which is every week. It's not just the hour that I'm coaching him. It's I'm going to the airport several times a week. I'm in the airport flying, delays, canceled plans, whatever, going to the hotel, checking

in the hotel every single week, multiple times a week. You have to go to his hotel, go to the workout. It's like, it's not just the hour you're with him. It's hours and hours and hours. It's a great way to lose all your friends. We had a good friend of ours who got offered a quarter million dollars for six months of training somebody, big Silicon Valley CEO.

And he went back and talked to his wife and was like, I basically just wouldn't see you for six months. And then they decided that even though, like, of course, a quarter million dollars for six months worth of work sounds dope. Like, they just didn't do it. It was too disruptive to their life. Smart. No, I mean, there's so many situations. I think the misconception with, like, traveling, everybody's like,, oh my god, it'd be amazing to travel. I have an...

You know what people like? They like vacation. That's it. Traveling fucking sucks. Being forced to go places. It's almost like working at a bar. You want to go to a bar, you're like, oh, this is fun. But when you have to go on a Tuesday, you're like, this is shit. That's my strength coach growing up. I was asking him, do you ever to go on a Tuesday, you're like, this is shit. That's my strength coach growing up.

I was asking him, do you ever want to open a gym or train people for money? Because he never trained people for money. He trained me for free and all my friends for free just because he liked it. And he was like, no, no, no. If this turned into my job, then I think the passion would die with me. I wouldn't want to do it anymore. Anytime you ask him, so what would you do if you had all the money in the world? Like, I would travel.

Like, no, you wouldn't. No, you wouldn't. You would want to be home a lot. Yeah. I tell everyone, like, I always say, all right, if you had a million dollars, would you? I'd retire and go to the beach. Okay. Then why the fuck isn't the Bahamas more popular?

Because New York City is overcrowded for a reason. Yeah. It's true. People want to work. people want to do shit What are you going to do on day four When you're bored out of your mind Like just stand on a beach in Fiji And be like, I did it

I'm not doing shit Plus people see like I'll be traveling with Gary, whether it's London, whatever They're like, oh are you going sightseeing I'm like, no I'm here for 12 hours I'm literally going to be Heathrow Airport twice in the next 20 minutes. Dude, when I was training with Cena, he would show up, and he would, like, he'd walk in, and you would just be like,

oh, wow, Cena, you look like you're 50 today. Like, what happened last night? You'd be like, well, we had WrestleMania in L.A., then I did the morning show in New York, and now I'm back here at 4 p.m. today to do a training session, and then I'm going to Tampa tonight to my other house so I can go overseas the day after. And you're like, oh. So you have nobody in your life.

The only people you connect with is your strength coach. I'm pretty much your best friend because you've seen me twice this month, and you're trying to have a real relationship. Like, you basically live in a jet. Like, that's real life. That's not glamorous. No, not at all. And most people go on a plane when they go on vacation.

Oh, you're on planes all the time. You're always going on vacation. Like, you don't get it. Yeah, right? You have no idea. I now pay for the quick check. The TSA thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Clear and all this shit. And there's still a line there. I'm paying $300 a year to get through a quick line that I'm now waiting. You've gotten to a select group to stand in line. They still always get your bag.

We've got to search your bag. Even though you're through first, other people are going by because you've got to check your bag. I had a guy breaking my balls the other day. I was traveling. I have my book bag that I use and I have a duffel bag like that.

And then I have my fanny pack. The guy's like, you can't go on the plane with three bags. I go, what three bags? This is a big fucking pocket. That's not. I love that he's going to give you shit about your backpack. Dude. He made me put it in my backpack.

Oh, no. I'm like, you destroyed the convenience store. Oh, that's so bad. God, take it easy, bro. Yeah, it was aggressive, too. Yeah. Dude, how do you overcome the effects of having to eat out every single meal of your life, though? I feel like we've been really good this trip.

We've eaten really good food, even though I did get sick almost eating sushi. I think we ate really well, and I still almost got sick. Like in the middle of the night, I was like, am I going to throw up? Do we have bad sushi? But I find that when we go on the road, it's like I'm three meals away from feeling like I just chugged a gallon of canola oil, and I'm going to die. It's brutal. It's terrible. It's super expensive.

It's unbelievably expensive. It's really hard so like that's why i needed to come up with challenges and many goals because like if i didn't it's just be like oh whatever i'll just get this and i'll just get that and like the amount of calories and meals that are cooked out it's insane yeah it's like and i'm a small guy i'm like 140 pounds so it's like really easy to go over my calories very quickly and then if i'm not doing much conditioning or if I have a rest day, it's super easy to just go over. So it's sort of just being a lot of discipline. And also being comfortable being hungry sometimes. That's a big thing.

A lot of people don't want to hear that. People are like, well, I don't want to ever be hungry. It's like, okay, well, that's part of the game. You mentioned intermittent fasting earlier. When I travel, I make it a point. Anytime I'm flying back home that day i just if i'm in the airport all day i just don't i just don't eat anything that's that's my day too fast i save i save money because i'm not buying a bunch of expensive food i'm likely

not to eat a bunch of junk because it's mostly junk in the airport you can find good stuff if you try of course but but it's easy to find junk and then on top of that like i get so much more work done because i don't have to like land and try and find food and sit down and do the whole thing like i just sit down got my laptop and i smash work the whole day it's like i got i got the the fasting bit handled i got the money bit handled and i got the productivity bit handled and i get home and i feel great about myself and then i can i can eat whatever good food once i finally get home yeah it's actually it was one of my so i like basically tried never eating the airport it was like if i'm in the airport i don't eat and i try to eat something before it was one of my, so I, like, basically tried never eating at the airport. It was like, if I'm in the airport, I don't eat.

And I tried to eat something before it. But one of my, like, main strategies was literally going to fast the whole day. And when I get to my hotel, it's going to be really late at night. But I'll get, like, a burger. Because, like, it's not going to be, like, a 3,000-calorie burger. But it's, like, that way I can fast the whole day. And, like, that way I'd be able to have one meal. But, like, that sucks if you're doing that three or four days a week. Yeah.

It's brutal. You just finished, like, a 10,000-calorie challenge, though? What in the world? I failed epically. Failed epically. It was awful. It was – Wait, so why are you doing that, though?

Yeah. How'd that happen? So, basically, I'm really going hard on YouTube. I'm trying to, like, really do a lot on YouTube. And apparently a lot of YouTube – Trying to work on my clickbait. Trying to get a lot of views on YouTube. And for whatever reason, people love watching people eat a ton of junk food.

And so 10,000 calorie challenges are huge on YouTube. Like a lot of people do that. But for me, I'm in the middle of this like 90 day phallus challenge. And so one of the most common questions I get from people is like, well, listen, like I had like three slices of pizza last night or like I had cake and I

ruined everything. And it's like, no, what I'm going to do is I'm literally going to eat thousands of calories of junk food in the middle of this 90 day phallus challenge and still make progress. And I'm documenting the whole thing, taking pictures, taking measurements, weights, all this stuff. And so people are like, oh my God, like you're eating all this junk in the middle of this challenge and you're still going to make progress. And so I did that last week and I'm still, I'm like already back down to my, like

the lowest weight and people, it's for me, it's important for people to see that what happens is most people they have one bad day and they think they screwed everything up and so i want to show you like in real time over these 90 days not only i'm going to lose fat but i'm also going to have a day where i purposely try and eat a massive amount and so now you have no excuse if you have like a slice of birthday cake if you go and have a bad night you have no excuse to give up and quit like it it's all about just getting back on track so that was sort of the point of it what uh what's the like business side and managing gary and all that did you see like i'm sure it helps the business side but you're also dude it's got to be brutal putting out what are you daily on youtube uh say like right now we're four to five times yeah that's a that's a ton of content to be putting out.

I mean, we're once or twice a week. We try to put out two shows a week, but it's on the road all the time. Like putting out four pieces of big content a week is no joke. Four to five on YouTube, one time a week podcast, two times a day on Instagram, at least one or two days. And even just like one or two tweets can be a lot, but like one or two tweets and then one time a day on Facebook, try and send one email a week.

It's like, it's a lot. Yeah. It's a lot. And that's sort of like where it went. The hardest time I had with my fitness was I was posting three times a day, every day, seven days a week on Instagram. I was spending at least eight hours a day on Instagram. But that's also when I had my biggest Instagram growth.

It's when I went from like 6,000 to over 200,000 in a six-month period. How are you managing all that? That guy with the camera? Rico just started a couple months ago. He does all the video editing. Yeah, exactly. He's a beast. He's an absolute animal.

How does that stuff just – does most of your business run through Instagram and YouTube then? No no so most of it actually comes from my website and my email list but instagram was a huge addition to that because that's i think it's a huge advantage nowadays because most people are like oh instagram cool and they go to instagram but like they don't have the background of creating long form content articles i think long form seo content whether it's for podcasts or articles or something, are way more valuable than like one Instagram post, which is relatively short.

That's an interesting one. Do you still feel like blogs and having long articles matters? I think it's way more important. I think the way I think of it is like an Instagram post is like taking a shot. A long form article is more like wine. It ages with time.

And like it's way more valuable. It's like in the short term, great. It's with time. It's way more valuable. In the short term, great. It's cool, but I would way rather have 100,000 people following me on YouTube than a million people on Instagram. Because the people on YouTube are spending 10 minutes, 15, 20 minutes watching a video of you.

People on Instagram, they're like, I don't want to read the whole caption. They're way more invested when they're watching all this time. So for a long-form article, for a long-form video, for a long-form podcast, those people are way more invested and they value you way more than someone on Instagram who double-tapped it without even reading it or watching it. I don't do much.

My thumb just hits it. I follow so few people. I'm like, oh, I'll just hit them all. Consuming the content. Exactly. And so I think Instagram is a lot more. Except Kenny's stuff. Of course. I don't even read some of my stuff. That's consuming the content. Yeah. And so I think Instagram is a lot more. Except Kenny's. Except Kenny's stuff. Of course.

I don't even read some of my stuff. That's why everything's spelled wrong. But yeah, I think that it's really interesting how social media plays into it. I mean, I have tons of friends that are crushing it on just using that to drive traffic. Are you still writing a big blog every week? No, not anymore. Like, no, I'm not anymore. For right now, I'm much more focused on video.

I love the video aspect. I have enough long-form written content to last me the rest of my life. I probably will get back into it because I do like it. But I love the video content. Do you ever get tired of seeing – I hate seeing myself on video. I spent 10 years on TV. I'm like, oh, God, I hate it. Shit, you even hear my voice sometimes.

Do you ever get tired of it? I think the hardest part is in the editing process where he'll send me, like, a piece of work, and then I have to watch, like, a 25-minute video and then tell him, like, what I think should be changed different. And we'll do that two, three, four, five times before the actual video comes out every day. It's just like that's what people don't realize. it's like it's not just you film and then you put it out it's like he's got to edit and then i gotta watch the 25 minute video and then he's probably editing right now exactly while he's filming more stuff yeah yeah uh he's taking like clips from this that'll make for instagram don't you feel like you've covered it all by now

yes i i do actually but in the same way like the craziest thing is people always, they like to be reassured. And they're always combating what other people are putting out there. It's like I'll put something out about binge eating. Like, listen, you had one bad meal. Like, it's not the end of the world. And I'll get hundreds of people being like someone like just put out on Instagram how it's like if you eat too much like you're a failure so you're always like combating the other people putting stuff out so it's not just like their knowledge it's also just like the reassurance like the just like the repetition of being there who's kind of your major people that follow you are it fluctuates

like you'll get some people that were following you heavy for like two or three years and then they kind of fall off and they're now they're following somebody new and you have new people so repeating yourself over and over and over again doesn't get repetitive because it's new people all the time exactly i've repeated myself about how to squat and how deadlift and how to do cleans like a thousand times and no one ever comes in and says like why are you why are you saying that you always say that like no one ever says that because it's always new people and i think i i've been told a lot of times that repeating yourself is how you're going to start to build an audience correct yeah i mean if that becomes your shtick that becomes your thing like gary's thing it's

like you know what he's talking about it's like chase what you love to do continue to do what you would love to do and it's part of everything he says what's he put out two three videos a day oh man he's a beast yeah so in every platform platforms people don't even know about it just constantly but like it's so interesting. I recently had a client who I used to work with. I worked with her for, like, a year and a half, one-on-one client. Like, they get full nutrition course, everything. And when the celery juice craze came out, she was like, what do you think about that?

I was like, what do you think about that? She was like, I just needed you to tell me that. That was it. She was like, I know. I know it's ridiculous, but I just needed you to tell me. I think that's, like, the repetition of stuff. It's, like, it's needed you to tell me that. That was it. She was like, I know. I know it's ridiculous, but I just needed you to tell me. I think that's like the repetition of stuff. It's like it's reassuring to people. Yeah.

What are you going to do when you got a three-year gig with Gary? Yeah, it's almost up, May 31st. Yeah, what are you going to do? So basically. Get back and like live a healthy life. So basically, Gary didn't want a new coach. And so he was like, are we going to keep going? What's going on

so and Mike his old coach wanted to get back in on it so we came up with a deal where we're gonna go three months on three months off so I'm gonna get three months off Mike's gonna take over and then I'll settle down I'll stay in New York actually for a little bit over the summer which will be great uh and then I'll come back on for three months and then so for that we have a one year deal so I'll coach him for six total months. That's pretty much it. I want to do a lot more speaking. I did speaking here at Solace. It was amazing, super fun.

I'll tell you what. I had four or five people reach out to me who didn't know who you were and were like, the other guy with Joe DeFranco was amazing. Even some of my coaches were like, he was so good. It's definitely something you should pursue for sure. What's the speaking, like what's your big topic when you get in front of the crowds? A lot of the mental and emotional aspect of coaching and the psychology side of it. And I basically spoke about it, but in terms of people know what to do.

Even if, whether it's, they don't need to know the intricacies of intermittent fasting or keto. People know like eat healthier, work out. They know that stuff. Apple, donut. They know. Work out, whether it's running, walking, going to the gym, whatever. But why aren't people making those decisions? So it's sort of helping coaches understand the psychology and the mindset of why that's happening

and how you can actually communicate with your clients to help make those changes. Because you can have the best program in the world, but if they're not following it consistently, then it doesn't do anything. Yeah. It's really hard for people to overcome that unless they have somebody like you online. There's a lot of people that are just motivational people that fire people up to get moving in the right direction. I think that that's one of the coolest things

about the Instagram thing. I think we focus so much on the negative side. We even talked about it earlier. You're a bullshit coach like you've never actually coached anybody but you've got three by five program that you sell online great but maybe that person isn't doing a terrible job because they're motivating their hundred thousand people to actually take action and do something a hundred percent I think a lot of times you see some of these people online you're like she's like oh I'm selling my program some of these people online and you're like, and she's like, oh, I'm selling my program. Some of these girls, I'm like, if you were selling cancer, I'd buy it.

I'm like, I get it. Here's my 20 bucks. 25 bucks to talk to you on there. That's cheaper than a drink in New York. I think you hired one of them right here. Oh, my God. She actually knows her shit. We just lost all the credibility and became very honest all at the same time.

Oh, my God. One of the best. I think your next business, though. We talk about this all the time. Your next business should just be like, okay, you're an influencer. Why do you move like shit? I'm going to teach you how to deadlift, all right? You want to do a clean stop?

Pulling the fucking bar with your arms. How's that sound? It's nails on chalkboard. You're like, wow, she has such a dope ass. Great abs, too. Wow, she's really pretty. Oh, my God. She can't even freaking row on the erg. It's a leg thing, lady.

What are you doing? You're so unbreedable. What is wrong with you? Why can't you just push the thing away? Drive with your leg. It drives me nuts seeing those Instagram people that can't squat well. It drives me crazy seeing those Instagram people that can't squat well. It drives me crazy. It's incredible.

But I think that's the only component they're really missing, unless they don't really have a personality either, which is 99% of the time. We're glad you have a personality to go along with the Instagram following. If you've got three months coming up, though, where you're going to be in New York City, or six months off in a year, well, off from working with gary like do you have bigger plans like where does if you're where's the speaking stuff start and just kind of how are you going to break into that that's not an easy world to break into yeah so um well actually uh one of the things i'm doing is i have a membership community and so for a lot of people who

couldn't afford my one-on-one i have a membership community and i'm hosting a free seminar just for them so literally in austin texas in july everyone who's in that membership community for like they have a free ticket i'm not selling it so you guys can just come i booked the hotel everything it's like got a lot of people coming so i'm going to do a two-day seminar for them um and basically just sort of like putting out more content of me speaking so got the entire solace thing filmed and so I'll take clips of that. Basically the biggest thing I've realized is if you want to do something, you just put more content out based around that thing that you're doing. So like if I want to do more speaking, just put more content out showing people that I'm speaking,

and I'll have more people reaching out to do it. I think something, too, is just like go do it. Yeah. Just for free. Just go do it because you're not hireable the first time you do it. I think something too is just like, go do it. Yeah. Just for free. Just go do it. Because you're not hireable the first time you do it. That's exactly right. You're really bad at it.

So I think when I started doing any public speaking whatsoever, the first thing I did was I went to Toastmasters. Which is like, there was like nine old people telling me how bad I was. And I was like, wow wow imagine if there was 50 of you here this would be really embarrassing but like just learning how to stand in front of people is a hard skill you need reps yeah that's exactly right and i think like i have no ego in terms of how much money i'm gonna pay i'll do it for free literally there's a company in new jersey that reached out they're like hey can you come speak to us i was like yeah like can you just pay for

my lunch they're like yeah sure yeah, sure. It's like... They cover travel expenses, so it doesn't cost me anything. I think a lot of coaches get super wrapped up in, like, oh, this person messaged me, like, a video of them deadlifting. Like, they don't think I'm, like, that I charge for this stuff. It's like, just fucking show them how to deadlift. Yeah. What the fuck is your problem?

People are way too focused on that dollar transaction. It's like, it would be way better for you long term if you just help people. And or just appreciate that they respect you enough to ask for your advice and be happy about it. I say that even for here. I'm like, yeah, I got to keep the lights on and keep this place going. But if I give out 100 free sessions a year, I'm

okay with it because it's the way to get them in the door. I'd say I've probably signed up 10 people I can name off the top of my head who were like, I'm interested in training, but I can say I've probably signed up 10 people, I can name them off the top of my head, who were like, I'm interested in training, but I can't really afford it, blah, blah, blah. Come in, they see the value. Exactly.

You'll always find a way to see the value. I mean, could anybody really afford a $10,000 purse, but you've got 100 women buying them. Exactly. So even though you can't afford it, if they see the value in it, they're willing to pay for it. That's the key, is just getting them to see the value. And they can't see the value if you don't have the opportunity to show it to them.

That's it. What on the business side though, on the online business, are you still creating programs and getting information out for selling programs? I don't really sell just like one-off programs. And I haven't been taking on one-on-one clients for a long time i do have some that i've been working with but i haven't been accepting new ones mainly because i've been doing more of the actual just like membership like it's a it's called like the inner circle it's just like a group for people if they want workouts and nutrition guidelines in a group community yeah like that's really where i've been focusing a lot a lot of

time because it comes to a point where it's like you can only work with so many people one-on-one before your ability to work with them effectively handles it's like you can only work with so many people one-on-one before your ability to work with them effectively handles so you can't give so many people the same like high quality coaching yeah and then for me it was like i just want more people to have that information so yeah it became more dude you're only 27 years old you've done all this stuff it's freaking crazy i didn't even start becoming a professional coach until i was 27 it's like a really really crazy thing to have gotten this much experience screw whatever like success we call that but like to have an unreal number of years ahead of you and like it's such a head start to be able to start doing this understanding social media understanding like creating long-form content on your on your website that's ridiculous how a bunch of a head start that

you have i mean just the experience is is really crazy it's one of those things i appreciate that and it's one of the things that's like people like i i work hard i work very hard and i don't take it away from myself but i also you like malcolm gladwell outliers a lot of stuff like i think i oh and i said it earlier i always go back to you like if Gladwell, Outliers, a lot of stuff. Like, I think, and I said it earlier, I always go back to, like, if my high school, if I didn't live in a town in which my high school had kettlebells, what would happen? Right? It's like the only reason that I ended up requesting to work at that gym, the kettlebell gym, is because my high school had kettlebells. It's like, things like that are so fortunate. The one high school that had the internet.

Exactly. Seriously. Like the programming computer that all They're so fortunate. It's like the one high school that had the internet. Exactly. Seriously. Like the programming computer that all those guys came from. That's exactly right. A great question that came up. I went to Tony Robbins this past week, and a great question that came up. I love this guy now, Pitbull, the singer. Super cool.

And he's like, you know, I know a lot of rich guys. I know a lot of successful singers and actors and all this stuff the stuff he's like most of them aren't happy most of them are miserable at this point you've done so much up to 27 are you happy are you happy where you're man i'm very blessed i'm super happy i'm super happy it's like it's one of those things where there's the phrase like always happy never satisfied which i very much disagree with like i don't think it's smart to say like you're always happy no one's always happy never satisfied which i very much disagree with like i don't think it's smart to say like you're always happy no one's always happy but i do like to say like always optimistic never satisfied and for me it's like that's one of the cool things about seeing with being with gary is like i've never heard him complain once ever in three years he chose that

life every way but like even like about people about things going on, I've never heard him complain. And I think the people who are generally the least happy, the people who are the most negative, they complain the most. They find the reason

to complain in everything. I think that I've been unbelievably blessed and fortunate in numerous ways and it's been a conscious effort to always try and find

the optimistic, the positive in things. And the people that I hang out with are the people who find the positive in things. And the people that I hang out with are like the people who find the positive in everything. And as often as possible, they're looking for the optimistic route. And it's like those are the happiest people on a consistent basis. Because you can always look for the negative or you can look for the positive.

It's easier to look for the negative. It's easier to complain. One thing me and my wife have been doing, I was telling Anders about just the other day, was that we very consciously have thrown out the kind of second half of some of our language where if she says something very basic like, hey, can you empty the dishwasher? Normally you just fill it up. You don't turn it on. Taking off the second half there and saying, hey, can you fill up the dishwasher

and not saying the other piece has been really, really good for our relationship and just how happy we are on a day-to-day basis by just, like, eliminating those little things. It's triggers almost. Yeah, or another thing, like, instead of saying, instead of framing something in the negative, if someone says, like, no rush, well, that's saying you don't want to have the anxiety of being rushed, right? Or you could say instead of no rush, you could say, take your time.

You know what I mean? Exactly. So we've been trying to do more things like that and just, even though they're very small things, I think all day long, it adds up. They make a huge difference. And it's something that I do a lot. I'll do a lot of live Q&As with my inner circle

and people will type in questions. And one of the things people are like, oh, well, I'm doing great in this but da da da it's like i could do great but it's always like but but but it's like anytime you're saying but you're taking away everything you just said before like if you say you like did all this positive stuff but it's like stop right or you could say and i'm going like instead of saying but this you could say and i'm going to do this on top of it i'd say like but complain and i'm gonna work hard to da da da it's like da. It's like, the language matters,

big time. And I think most people don't, they're not consciously aware of how negative they're being and how pessimistic they're being. And like, you can complain all you want, but it's way better

if you actually provide a solution, like a positive solution rather than a negative nothing that does anything, you know. Is there anything on the horizon on the social world that like really piques your interest

of like shifting like instagram just showed up like fucking seven years ago or something and like radically shifted the whole landscape um are you guys paying attention to anything in there that is really gonna make waves in the future yeah well i mean i think i think video is huge i think video that's really why i'm spending a lot of time on youtube but But I think Alexa skill, I think the Alexa skill stuff is going to. What is that? Wait, what is that? Oh, God, we're so old.

I know, right? Are we behind the times now? We're already a part of the media. Thank God. He just made it up. Just mic drop. Walk out now. Sorry, guys.

I got to go. Alexa skills. I heard some. Alexa is the voice command thing. Yeah. The Amazon stuff. What's the skill part? What does that have to do with video, though?

Well, that has nothing to do with video. But I mean, I think that's going to be huge in fitness. Alexa, back squat 1,000 for me. Well, for example, imagine if every morning we could sort of try and come up with something for fitness. But with Alexa, it knows everything about you. So, like, right now, if you have an Alexa skill in your house, you could be like, Hey, Alexa, order me three pairs of boxer briefs. And they already know what boxer briefs you like. know what company they know that they know your size so

they it just goes through on amazon you're like alexa order me an uber to here and like it's already tapped on your uber like just done it's always done for you just speak it and just as a crude example of what might happen with fitness stuff is like uh what if you every morning you wake up and you're like all right i want to want to do like a five-minute mobility routine. Hey, Alexa, like go do barbell shrug mobility routine. And then you guys have like the mobility routine of the day that you put out every day, a five-minute one that you just speak out. All right, cool. We're going to do toe touches. Cool.

Now we're going to do this. It's like just speaking out loud to you. It doesn't have to have the video, and I'm sure the video component will come with it. But I think like that's going to be for sure something that's going to happen. Did you write that down? We're taking notes right now. That's for sure. The cool thing is you can

already take content you've made and turn it into a skill. This is called an Alexa skill. That's one thing. I also think virtual reality AR is going to be insane. I tell everybody, have you seen Ready Player One? No. Oh my god. You have to watch Ready Player One? No. No.

Oh, my God. You have to watch that because it's definitely our fate that people are just going to live in this virtual reality world. Or is it the goggles you put on and then it's like you're living in this world outside? Yes. I saw that the other day on YouTube. It's crazy. It's funny because if you watch the documentary about Instagram, about all these celebrities on Instagram, they're all fed up with living in the real world, and they're all going to the virtual reality and living there for hours.

So I think that's like everyone's fate. Yeah. I often think, though, like you say this, and we're in a gym. There's people here. They're communicating with each other. There's something special that happens when people actually have to be in a room and answering to a coach or learning something they have this in vr dude they literally have classes already where like they have a coach up in front of everybody and you have friends is that what the neo you fitness thing is is that a

new you new you forcer's thing that jen doing. We can get Widerstrom in 3D in our living room? Anytime I want. No, what they're doing is they have an app where you can just click on these workouts and just pull up a workout. I don't think it's a virtual reality. They have virtual reality.

Literally where you sign up for a class and you go. You have the coach in front of you and they're doing it. You're watching it and you go. And it's like you have the coach in front of you, and they're doing it, and you're watching it, and you do it. And then it's so real that if someone in the class is, like, being a jerk or saying – they'll kick you out. They'll boot you out. They're like, no, we don't want – like, don't be screaming. Don't be, like, whatever.

Don't interrupt. So it's a real class. But how do you do it? Like, say there's, like, pull-ups in it. It's like, oh, I'm going to go over and pretend I'm doing it. Yeah, like – I just did 11. It's interesting because human interaction has to happen. Something that amazes me is anytime you hear a TED Talk or a speaker that's lived in in captivity or been like a prisoner of war like that stuff fascinates me because it's like the bottom of human depravity like it's it's crazy to me it's

illegal to leave an animal alone in a cage for more than two days and they say that the human mind starts to go crazy it's almost like drinking salt water. After, I think it's like 72 hours, like you start to get fucked up. So you need to interact with it. It's part of what... One of the reasons I started going down this rabbit, I had a client that spent like a year in the hole in jail. And he was like, terrible history in his life and all the things gang

violence blah blah blah goes to jail starts a basically like a i guess you would call like a fight in jail whatever it is like gang war in jail they throw him in the hole for a year he learns a bunch of stuff to actually get his case appealed. He gets out of jail. A week later, he goes and commits another crime with his gang on the outside. And they throw him back in the exact same hole that he had just gotten out of a week later. And he was like, dude, you have no idea what it's like when there's like a showerhead of sunlight that gets into your room and you have nobody to talk to for a year. And he was like, that was what changed my life is I had to sit there and I had to make up the fact that I was talking to people. And he was like, I would

just go into my head and I would close my eyes and dream that I was on a beach running. And that's how I found out about fitness. And he was like like that's when i started to get in shape to create my he was like if you don't create your own reality in solitary you go absolutely insane and that's really what led me down this rabbit and i often wonder like if we continue to go down the path of like virtual do we miss the weird human interaction part that the thing that we don't know about that's happening when people are in the same room like the energy that's around this table right now the the sweating that goes on like do we need to bump into people for ourselves to actually like be able to interact with our environment there's a lot of pieces of just fucking people being together that matter that i don't know if one day we're all in virtual reality

and now what happens to all those things? I don't know. I mean, I wish I had an answer, but I will say the one thing. Aren't you a scientist too? Yeah, come on. We're looking for you for these answers. Now that you know everything about social media, we need more. I think what Gary would say is probably like

humans are amazing at adapting and every step along the way there's always been people saying like oh that's not going to work that's not going to work like we like that we can't do that but i think it's going to work adapt like that's augmented reality is going to take over way before virtual reality takes over for the record like virtual reality is never going to be like an all-day everyday thing yeah like today anyone that i know that has a virtual reality headset, they use it rarely or never. It's like a total novelty. They'll go into it,

they'll kind of check it out, it's kind of fun for a second, then it goes back in their drawer and they don't do it every day. Porn. Until Google Glass didn't work, I think Apple at some point will come up with like sexy eyewear

and like do the Apple Glasses and augmented reality will be a huge part of that. It's already part of their phones, they're getting into wearables. I think Apple glasses are the thing that will probably eventually come that will change the whole virtual reality, augmented reality scene. Augmented reality really will be the thing.

Are you single? No, I'm not. With a social media following like yours? Come on, man. I'm in Denver. You're not trying to get locked down in one person's house. Dating is so easy nowadays if you use an app or something. You can meet any girl at any time or anywhere you want.

$25. I'd rather go out and meet somebody. Maybe I'm old school. Maybe I'm weird. But it just feels more natural. You're a closer. That's what you are. I'd like to think so.

You don't need the internet. You're a closer. That's what you are. I'd like to think so. You don't need the internet. You're a closer. But to talk to somebody on the internet and have this awkward interaction that you don't know the person, I don't know. I feel like it's a lot more legwork than it would be if I just randomly met you. Well, here's the thing. Is Gary Vee going to hire virtual reality? He always jokes about that. Especially for his cameraman, he's always like, D-Rock, one day you're going to be replaced by this, like, Pokeball that I throw in the that and he especially for his cameraman he's always

like d-rock one day you're gonna be replaced by this like pokeball that i throw in the air and he follows me around but it's like it's real like that's probably gonna happen but i mean gary also he loves human interaction that's the thing is everybody needs it so it's the further you remove yourself from it then all of a sudden one day we're all going to wake up. I feel like I'd just be like, can I just go to the real gym and sweat it out with some people? I just feel like. I'd like to laugh with people. All of this, the option of having it doesn't take away the option of not having it either. So, like, we also have that option, that choice to, like, be with people as well.

You know, it's like, realistically, you didn't have to travel here to do a podcast. We could have done it on Skype call. It's valuable to you. There's a vibe. It matters. I think that when it matters to people, they'll make that option. They'll make that choice. I think you want to see if he can get you to get a boner. That was actually

the plan. He has one right now. I wish that guy had pulled his sweatshirt down further. Yo, dude, this has been a pleasure. I love meeting people that have done amazing things in their career because I think a lot of people probably know you as Gary V's trainer, but what they don't know is that you were very early on the scene creating really good content.

And leading from a place of education is really, like, the thing that I look for in humans, especially in our industry is like, can you actually talk the talk? Like everybody's got the Instagram, everyone's got a YouTube channel, but can you actually lead with really good content and, and bring like elevate the platforms and, and elevate the conversation. And that's why we come and do these things in person so we can sit down and see who's bullshit and who's real

thank you it was amazing meeting you guys it's awesome it's a pleasure you guys are crushing it love everything you're doing for the industry

thanks man thank you it's amazing to meet you really very cool where can people find you at? YouTube

Jordan Syatt J-O-R-D-A-N-S-Y-A-T-T Instagram Syatt Fitness or just Google my name. You'll find me. Mr. Beautiful. Oh, at Kenny Santucci and right here, Solace, New York.

Solace, New York. Yeah. You take drop-ins, I'm assuming, if you're traveling through New York. This is the place to be. I love to have new people. I can't get away from it. I've been told a hundred times, oh, you should put something online. I'm like, I could give a fuck less to talk to

a computer. I'd rather meet you in person. I love this. This is so good. That's why I'm always open to having people in here and having, you know, it just changes the energy. It makes me feel better. Yeah. Doug Larson. Yep. Find me on Instagram and everything's drug collective. I'm Anders Varner

because I'm at Anders Varner because I'm Anders Varner, I think. Strug Collective. Five days a week. Strugged on Wednesdays and Saturdays. We'll see you guys next week. TheOneToneChallenge.com. Strong people.

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