Jordan is the owner, head coach, and lead author on SyattFitness.com. He’s a 5x World Record Powerlifter, Precision Nutrition & Westside Barbell certified coach, and has been featured in CNN, The Huffington Post, Men’s Fitness and more. 

Note from Matt: This interview was recorded from a Skype call with Jordan and then written down by me. Some portions may be edited slightly for an easier read.

Matt: When did you first fall in love with fitness and strength? Did you know from the very beginning that you wanted to become a fitness professional?

Jordan: I first started wrestling at the age of 8 and when I started high school as a freshmen I made the Varsity team. The first thing I had to do was cut a lot of weight. I was already very interested in the fitness portion of it all, but I hadn’t really worried about the nutrition portion til that point. From there I really started to get into the science of nutrition and exposed myself to research because I had to lose a lot of weight, maintain that number, and perform well as an athlete. So, at 13/14 years old I started to jump into higher level fitness information. By the time I was 16 I ended up getting my first personal training job because I loved it so much. I started coaching people long before I should have been able to, but I had some awesome mentors who trusted me at a very young age and allowed me to grow. From that point on there was no question that this was what I wanted to do.

Matt: Was that a high school gym or a local gym that let you train others at such a young age?

Jordan: When I was training for wrestling one of the things I started to get really into was kettlebell training because I followed Zach Even-Esh and Pavel very closely. I realized that kettlebell training, Indian clubs, and things of those sorts were really useful for mixed martial artists and grapplers. As I got more into kettlebells I searched for a local KB gym in the Boston area and found one that specialized in this style of training. They let me come in to interview and hired me at 16 years old which was incredible.

Matt: That’s awesome. From there you started doing strength and nutrition training with Martin Berkan?

Jordan: Yeah, so a lot happened between then, but when I was freshmen in college I hired Martin as my coach. He was extraordinarily generous with answering all my questions because he knew that I was a coach and wanted to make a name for myself. The main reason I did that program was so I could understand his system. The reality was that I hadn’t seen anyone posting consistent client success stories like he was so I knew there was something he was doing that no one else was. So I said fuck it and hired him so I could learn from him. That gave me an entirely new perspective and really helped me understand the body composition aspect of nutrition and training as well.

Matt: So the goal with interning with Louie Simmons and Eric Cressey from there was to fill different gaps that you had as a fitness professional?

Jordan: Exactly. I was never a bodybuilder or body composition guy. I didn’t really give a shit about how I looked. It was more about how I performed. When I was done working with Martin I was all gung-ho on powerlifting. I emailed Louie Simmons and he invited me to train with him for the summer which was an unbelievable experience. Then I did the same thing with Eric Cressey the following winter. That year I learned more from those two internships than I did in my four years of university. It proved to be exceptionally helpful because I was not only learning about the science and the theory of training, but how to coach people, be in the gym, and make adjustments so that clients could reach goals. There was no better experience than being in the facility, training, and getting stronger.

Matt: What’s the #1 take away you had from your experiences from WestSide and Cressey Performance that you could pass along to other fitness professionals?

Jordan: The top thing I took away from Westside that I would pass along to other fitness professionals is to always, always, always pay it forward. Always put people first. Most people don’t understand Louie. They look at him and think that he’s dogmatic and an asshole, but Louie treated me as if I was his son. He didn’t know me. He didn’t have any reason to give me the time of day. Despite that, he let this 18 year old kid come out from Boston to WestSide and gave me an incredible amount of time. He would take me out to lunch and dinner and let me ask as many questions as I wanted. This is arguably the most influential dude in the strength and conditioning world, the “Godfather of Powerlifting”. To me that spoke volumes. Everyone has time, but it’s just about what you prioritize to fit in your day. Putting people first is the best thing you can do because the reality is if he didn’t put me first I wouldn’t have been able to have the impact I’ve had or that I hope to have in the future. As crazy as it sounds, putting people first and really paying it forward is what I took away from WestSide. I’m sure that’s not what you expected to hear (laughing).

I took a lot from Cressey, but I think the best thing I took away was this quote, “How can you know what the body does if you don’t know what the body is?” It was really at Cressey Performance where I started to take a vested interest in gross anatomy, functional anatomy, how the body works, and how it moves. If it wasn’t for Eric specifically I wouldn’t have taken extra anatomy courses and I wouldn’t have invested into extra anatomy textbooks. I spent a lot of my time and effort, close to a year and a half’s worth, focusing on assessments, working on the body, anatomy, and all that stuff. If it wasn’t for that experience I wouldn’t be nearly the coach that I am or be able to teach the way I teach because I have a much deeper understanding of it now. When I’m working with coaches one of the first things I’ll tell them is that they need to have a solid understanding of the human body and how it works because it you don’t know how it works you aren’t going to be able to know what it does.

Matt: The number reason I wanted to interview you was because I think you’ve accomplished something amazing for someone at the age of 23. You started as a fitness professional really early, learned from some excellent people in the industry, started your online fitness brand, and leveraged online training into co-owning a gym already. I think it’s a great example for other young fitness professionals to see what’s possible if you put in the work. Was your goal from the start to open up a gym of your own?

Jordan: That’s a really good question. It wasn’t always my goal to open up my own facility, not at all. It’s always been in the back of my mind because all of the people I respected and followed did have a facility. Eric Cressey, Louie Simmons, Mike Robertson, and more, for example. A few years back I started to get really into the online side of fitness and I have to thank JC Deen for that. JC was the guide behind everything I did when I started. If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t have done any of this. I never would have started my own website. To get back to your question, the more I got into the online world the more I started to think that maybe I wouldn’t open up my own facility. At this point it’s great to be a partner alongside Steve Bergeron, but I also think that the merit to online coaching is extraordinary and can’t be understated. In an industry where so many fitness professionals struggle to make ends meet getting online is the best thing you can do. Getting online opens so many doors and opportunities to not only help more people, which is obviously the main goal, but to make more money for yourself. I think a lot of fitness professionals forget that they spend years and years in school studying and practicing and then they feel bad for charging people for their services. That’s a backwards mindset. They need to realize that their services are valuable and that charging for them is not a bad thing. When people value their health as much as they should they will pay for your services. So, opening a gym is phenomenal, but opening a gym AND having an online component is sort of like training and nutrition. It’s good to be a great nutrition coach and it’s good to be great training coach, but it’s much better to be really good at both. For me, I want to be an excellent in-person and online coach.

Matt: If there are other fitness professionals who read this and are looking to follow a similar path what advice would you give them in the very beginning?

Jordan: Honestly the first thing I would tell them from a business perspective is to get online immediately. Get online and get a website. Not a blog or a .blogspot, a real website. Invest in the $85 or whatever it costs a year to get started. Start writing, get on social media, and put information out. More than anything else, more than marketing or creating products, just put out really good high-quality content. It doesn’t have to be everyday. Once a week, or a few times a month, put out ridiculously good information that people will enjoy. If you consistently do that for a year or two years you will develop a brand name you will develop a following, and you will develop trust. With that trust you can develop a phenomenal business of your own online. Opening a facility is great, but if you open a facility before you have that online presence you’re going to have a much more difficult time eventually getting online. If you’re coaching in a box gym or a local gym near you that’s great, but a huge amount of your focus should be on creating a brand online because that’s where you’re going to be able to generate a lot of income and realistically impact more people.

Matt: We get a lot of personal trainers who come to our site interested in training clients online, but aren’t sure what the first step to take is. They hesitate because they don’t seem to know which step to take first and how much work it will be before anything really happens.

Jordan: Oh my god man, there is so much work involved. It’s insane. You know what’s funny though? Getting a website up and running only takes about an hour to do, which is something that holds a lot of trainers back from getting started. What’s really scary is the amount of work that will go into creating the free content that you’ll put online. I couldn’t even imagine how many hours I’ve put in already and the reality is that I’m still relatively new. I mean Eric Cressey has been writing since 2005 and I’ve only been writing from 2009/2010 so I’m a newbie at all of this. I think what I’ve done is pretty crazy but there’s people like Eric, Nick Tumminello, Bret Contreras and more who have been at it for years. These guys have put in so many hours, it’s incredible. I think that’s what really makes these people the ones that we look up to because they are the powerhouses of producing content. Very few people are willing to put in that amount of time and work. It is daunting, but if you want to do it you’re going to shut up and put in the time to do it.

Matt: Absolutely. I just want to add that even though there’s people who have been writing about health and fitness for 30 years there are still plenty of niches and areas that are left untouched for personal trainers to write about themselves.

Jordan: I’m glad you brought that up. A lot of personal trainers will say that there’s nothing new that they can write about. People ask me what to write all the time because they think everything has already been written about. The first thing I’ll ask them is how many times a week do they have someone, a family member or someone within your friend group, ask you for fitness help or advice. The answer is that it happens all the time. People forget that in the online world everyone has their own audience of people that aren’t as informed as we are. When you’re really involved in the fitness world like we are you tend to forget how misinformed the general population is. Just being on Facebook along, that’s your own private audience who are going to be very receptive to what you have to say. Even if you think that no one is going to listen to you and there’s nothing new you can say it’s an invalid excuse. You have an audience who don’t know what you know about fitness and you have the opportunity to help them.

Matt: Now that you’re growing a gym facility along with your online business what does an average day look like for you? I know you were putting in a lot of work back before you graduating college (laughing).

Jordan: It’s pretty crazy (laughing). In college I was actually up earlier and went to bed later than I do now. Now I’ve become much better at time management which is a skill. It used to take me a very, very long time to write an article. They still can take a while, but I’ve gotten better at it. At this point I’ll normally get up a five or six AM with six being the absolute latest. If it’s a day where I’m going to the gym I’ll be there by 6:15. I’ll be coaching pretty much all morning so about 6am-2pm. After that is when I start doing a ton of my online stuff, so once 2pm hits I’ll go to a coffee shop and get to work. I don’t work well in my apartment so the coffee shop works out nicely. In this time frame I’ll do anything that I need to that’s creative. Whether it’s writing an article, creating a product, newsletters, etc. As the night goes on and I need a bit of a break I’ll start to answer client emails and do programs. The things I know how to do on auto-pilot and don’t require a ton of creativity. From there I’ll probably be in bed hopefully around 8 and 10pm, but realistically 10 and 12.

Matt: Putting in the work. That’s why I like you Jordan.

It seems the extra sleep  is helping your strength training these days. What are you working towards with your strength goals right now and what can we expect from you this year?

Jordan: My next competition is coming up in a few weeks and the major goal that I’ve been chasing for as long as I can remember, even before I deadlifted 3x my bodyweight, was to deadlift 4x my bodyweight. There’s only a handful of people who have ever done that, ever. So at this powerlifting competition I’m going to try to deadlift 530 lbs at 132 lbs bodyweight. If I hit that it will be a big milestone for me and something that I’ve been chasing for years and years. If I also happen to squat 3x my bodyweight at this competition that would be phenomenal. It’s not something I’m going to push myself too hard with, but if I’m feeling really good and going hard I’ll do it. 3x bodyweight squat, 2x bodyweight bench, and 4x bodyweight deadlift are definitely all possible at this competition. The 4x goal is the number one goal.

Matt: What can we expect to see this year for your business and online brand?

Jordan: 2015 is going to be a really big year for me. I’ve spent the last 8 months working on content and product creation. I’m going to be releasing not only a lot of new products, but products that no one else has released before. Things that have never been written about and aren’t rehashed. Whether you’re a personal trainer, strength enthusiast, or whatever, these are things that are going to be of interest that will drastically help your strength and performance. Ebooks to DVDs to monthly webinars are going to be going out to my subscribers, so if you aren’t signed up already I highly recommend signing up for my mailing list to stay in touch with the new content that I’m releasing.

Matt: Last question for you. What are you excited to see with the fitness industry for this upcoming year?

Jordan: That’s a really good question. You know, there are allows fads going in and out of the fitness industry and one of the fads I wrote about and gave a contrarian view to was the diaphragmatic breathing stuff. Going in to 2014 everyone was saying that diaphragmatic breathing was going to be the biggest thing and talking about the FMS assessments and everything. I’m really excited to see where the tide goes in regards to assessments, diaphragmatic breathing, crawling, and these methods that people tend to latch on to as the end all be all. From a mainstream fitness population perspective are these methods going to become even more popular and dogmatic or are they going to become a little more of a gray area? Are the methods going to be seen as a great tool instead of the end-all that that they were once viewed as? I’m looking forward to finding out.

Matt: Big thank you to Jordan for sharing his time with the StrengthPortal team. If you aren’t already I highly recommend following his content through the links below:

• SyattFitness.com
• Jordan's FaceBook Page
• Twitter - @SyattFitness

Are you coaching clients online? Check out StrengthPortal’s software for personal trainers and online coaches here: www.strengthportal.com