Barbell Shrugged - Foxy, Fit, and Functional – You Can Have It All with Marcus Filly’s Functional Bodybuilding Approach — Muscle Maven Radio Episode #14

Episode Date: May 9, 2019

Marcus Filly grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and had a collegiate career in soccer at the University of California, Berkeley. There he earned his degree in Molecular and Cell Biology with an emphasis in Nutrition and Physiology. After Berkeley he complete a year of graduate work at the Ohio State University School of Medicine. His interest in both athletics and human health and performance eventually led him to CrossFit in 2007. He has gone on to compete at the CrossFit Games 6 times, three times as an individual (2016 12th fittest) and three times as a team member (2012 6th fittest team). Marcus has been a health and fitness coach for ten years since leaving medical school in 2009. He was formerly a CrossFit facility owner for five years, has completed all five of the OPEX CCP courses, and has coached clients remotely from all over the world. Marcus founded Revival Strength, based in San Rafael, California, to help clients from diverse fitness backgrounds fall in love with their training. Revival Strength also offers remote and online group training programs.   What better way to work on looking, feeling, and performing better than to learn from someone who’s had a lot of success doing it. Elite CrossFit athlete, gym owner, and trainer Marcus Filly talk to us about the evolution of his own approach to training, mindset and coaching as he went from his twenties to thirties, and his shift in approach from maximum intensity competitive CrossFit to longevity, recovery, and functional training, while still maintaining a high level of performance (and beach bod muscles). We talk about the growth of functional bodybuilding, his personalized approach to coaching, how he works, trains, and eats, and how to shift your mindset: stop comparing your current self to your former self, and instead embrace new challenges, goals, and training paradigms.   Minute Breakdown:   0 - 19 What is functional bodybuilding? We dive straight into a meathead discussion on injury prevention, hybrid training, and how to manage our desire for intensity and tendency for overtraining. How can high performing and recreational athletes alike still chase goals, challenge themselves, and look good in different phases of their life?      19 – 29 How to remove the ego from training; why pain is a powerful motivator; why comparison rarely has the positive outcomes you hope it will; and how exploring new training methodologies can improve your fitness as you get older     29 – 33 Talking about his experience training under James Fitzgerald and taking all 5 of the OPEX CCP courses and how this informs his training and coaching   33 – 38 Why the key, as a trainer, is to listen and truly understand what clients want; being able to support both elite athletes and the majority of people who just want to look and feel better without simply pushing your own personal approach   38 –  52 What’s a day in Marcus’ life like? How does he balance work and health, and how does he turn his challenges—in life and business—into learning opportunities     52 – We chat about nutrition and his personal approach, including some testing he had recently that informed him that he shouldn’t be drinking coffee – Ashleigh offers an alternative      ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Show notes: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/mmr-filly ---------------------------------------------------------------------- @Hylete- Hylete.com - Mavin15 for 15% off   ► 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

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Once more, that's code MAVEN15 at Highleet.com for a discount on some sexy-ass workout gear. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Muscle Maven Radio. Thank you for being here with me. And let me just start off by saying that if you're listening to this and you're 22 and you're a high-performing athlete with zero injuries, well, congratulations. Stop showing off, okay? But also, you may think that this episode isn't necessarily for you because we're talking about a focus on functional fitness and injury prevention rather than how to just be a fire breather that crushes everyone at the gym. But I think this episode has a lot to offer for all of us, including those of us who are maybe a little past our initial competitive phase of life, or maybe we're just looking for new ways to get fit and sexy in the gym.

Maybe for a host of reasons, we're just looking to be a bit more efficient or have more of a focus on recovery, training smarter rather than training harder. All of that, while of course, still being super fit and looking super good on the beach, because let's face it, that's all we really want. So who better to talk about this topic than someone who has literally gone through the trajectory of super high intensity elite CrossFitter to still super high performing athlete with, I'm going to guess, 0.7% body fat. He's now a gym owner and a trainer. He works with thousands of athletes from recreational ones to competitive ones. You know who he is. His name is Marcus Philly.

But what you may not know about him is that in addition to being a collegiate athlete and competitive CrossFitter, he also has a degree in molecular and cell biology with an emphasis on nutrition. And he went to medical school before leaving because he decided he wanted to be a trainer and gym owner instead and help change people's health in that way. So he's gained experience through his own athletic career and research and hard work. He's worked with OPEC's founder and original winner of the CrossFit Games, James Fitzgerald. He's got a background in bodybuilding-style workouts as well. So taking all of this together, he developed his own approach to functional fitness that, to me, sounds like it's the best of all worlds.

And it certainly seems to be working for him. If you check out Marcus Philly on Instagram, go there if you need some incentive to put down the donut. My goodness. Anyway, so we talk today just about the evolution of functional bodybuilding, his personalized approach to coaching, how he works, how he trains, how he eats. And most importantly, we talk about how to shift your mindset to stop comparing your current self to your former self. All that, oh, remember I used to lift this or I used to be able to do this or I used to do it this quickly. Like get over it. Just stop. Instead, embrace new challenges, new goals, and new training paradigms so that you can continue to evolve and be the fittest and healthiest you can be.

I love this chat. I hope you do too. I hope you enjoy it. Here we go. My interview with Marcus Philly. Because I have found in the past, and this happens to me all the time that I will, I will start recording too formally and miss interesting things. And then I stop recording. And when I stop recording, and you've been on enough podcasts that this isn't going to be your problem. But when I stop recording, oftentimes with people who maybe are a little bit more shy about this medium, and then they'll just start like unleashing with all this interesting, cool stuff that they wanted to say. And like, why didn't you say that when I was recording? So I always try to like sneaky start earlier so that just I don't miss anything good. So anyway, that's's fine that's a good tip for me

in the future I will uh I'll remember that yeah you got to do it anyway Marcus thank you again for taking the time to be on the podcast I really appreciate it and uh did you just correct me if I'm wrong you literally just finished um you did a talk for the upcoming Granite Games or have you not done that or yet yeah that was that was this morning. That happened a few hours ago, so I'm making the rounds. Yeah, this is your media day, apparently, Friday. It is my media day. Thank you, yeah. No, it's a pleasure to – you know, I'm definitely still in a stage,

and I hope I always remain in this stage of just really loving and feeling grateful for these opportunities to just speak about whatever I am doing in life and whether people want to talk about my past or the current state of affairs within the fitness industry and how I'm impacting it or how I'm trying to impact it. It's just, you know, three, four years ago, people weren't asking me for these kinds of conversations. So it feels good for sure. That's awesome. Well, I want to talk to you about all of those things. But first of all, what were you chatting about for the Granite Games talk today? Well, I have a relationship that goes pretty far back with John Swanson.

And but most recently, he has been a client of mine or our company for a little over a year. He started with a group online training program, and then he transitioned into an individual training client of ours. So he really resonates with some of the philosophies that I've been talking about on social media, the message I've been sharing, and through my website and our programs, more of like training for sustainability for the future. How do we capture this group of people who have kind of ridden the wave of intensity and training for too long? And they're sort of like, Oh, I don't know if I can keep up with this anymore. I'm kind of feeling burnt out and beat up. What's a sustainable future and keeps them engaged look like. So that was kind

of what we were just getting into the details of. Cool. Okay. Well, I do want to talk about sort of exactly that because I'm, I think, probably a key audience for you. Because everything you're saying there already is like speaking my language, but we might bounce around a little bit. But maybe let's just start with because most of our listeners, I think, are certainly already familiar with your name and your background in CrossFit. But I want to just jump right into the work that you're doing with your your business and your coaching and training programs. And I want to start with a conversation about the term and the concept functional bodybuilding, because as someone who I started in CrossFit in like 2008, and I rode that wave and did that whole thing. And then I actually moved

into bodybuilding where I was competitive for a while. And now I'm kind of just doing like, you know, pulling together everything that I know and kind of doing what I feel like, which is great. There's not a, it's a little aimless, but it's kind of making some of the best of all of those worlds. So it sounds like what you're doing is right up my alley. I'd love for you to kind of just tell our listeners what that means, what functional bodybuilding is. Sure, absolutely. Well, you know, the term functional bodybuilding has actually been around for a long time. And it's been used by different groups to sort of mean different things. And so I think it's not a term that I own by any means. I do feel like in the last two and a half years, I've kind of brought it back to life.

You know, I started seeing the word functional bodybuilding, maybe even like 1520 years ago, when I was like, looking at testosterone.net and t nation.com, those websites where a lot of bodybuilders were basically going to get their information. And some strength coaches were writing some pretty thoughtful pieces on there. And they would talk about the difference between bodybuilding and then strength conditioning and functional ranges of motion. And they threw around the term functional bodybuilding, but it didn't really stick. So that's just sort of the background on the term. But really for me and where it came into play was this.

I had a background in bodybuilding, moving into the strength conditioning or CrossFit world. So reverse of what you've kind of experienced yourself. And when I shifted into, so I loved training. I mean, I wasn't one of, I wasn't the guy that was like bored with bodybuilding. I just found CrossFit and I fell in love with it. I loved bodybuilding. I loved the feeling of training muscles for an aesthetic purpose, but also just for the pump and just for the, just the feeling that you got leaving the gym and being confident in yourself. And, um, and then fast forward a number of years later, CrossFit just took me on this, this big climb up a mountain

where I was chasing performance at an elite level. And the, the thing that I used to love that made me feel good and give me confidence going to the gym, getting a pump was now this thing that stressed me out, pushed my body to the, to the breaking point. Uh, there were certainly rewards and tremendous moments of like, uh, uh, sense of accomplishment in my success as an athlete, but I was very much feeling kind of the, the negative impacts of, of just intensity and performance-based fitness all the time. And so I kind of got to like a breaking point in 2016 where everything was just sort of falling apart. I just didn't have the drive in me to come back for another year and another year of the same of the same competitive CrossFit. And in order to like regain some passion

and regain some balance in my life and just my energy and my health, I kind of reverted back to some bodybuilding principles, but didn't really feel like going back to the sets and rep schemes that I used to do. I wanted to keep a lot of the same movements. I wanted to keep some of the best things that I learned from intensity training and CrossFit and functional fitness. And that was when I started kind of playing around with hybrid training. And because I was posting it on social media a lot and getting a lot of traction, a lot of engagement, more engagement on the posts of me doing what became known as functional bodybuilding. I had more engagement on those posts than I had on my regionals prep training videos and CrossFit Games prep training videos that I was posting

on social media. People wanted to see more of me doing some isolation, slow tempo work, you know, muscle activation in the same day that I was snatching. And that was interesting to me. And there was one specific day, and I think it was October 16th of 2016. I did a particular training session that my coach had written for me, that I got like this massive pump, like just like the old bodybuilding days. And it was, it was all with like functional, more functional CrossFit type movements, but the way we had slowed things down, the rep ranges, et cetera, I just felt it. And I really organically was just like, man, today felt like a bodybuilding day, but here I am doing this functional stuff.

This was functional bodybuilding. This felt like functional bodybuilding. I hashtagged it. Then, to be honest, I could never look back. It just became a part of the language of what I was speaking. Now, it really has a look and a feel and a methodology behind it that I really am, you know, passionate about sharing with people. That's so awesome. Like you really hit on the best of both worlds. You're doing like

functional movement that isn't killing you plus getting a pump, which everyone, and I love the fact that what you're, you're doing encompasses it's smart training that isn't intended to burn you out. You're learning proper body mechanics, but you're you're doing encompasses it's smart training that isn't intended to burn you out you're learning proper body mechanics but you're also admitting that like we all want to have a beach body and get a pump on because i think sometimes crossfitters protest a little too much that they're just in it for the prs and like people want to you know crossfitters make fun of bodybuilders for being all about aesthetics and bodybuilders make crossfitters for their weird workouts that they do let's not kid. Like we're all in it to be strong and look good. So let's just, you know, we have more

in common than we do not. So let's just, you know, mix the best of both worlds and see what happens. I love it. Yeah. And I've always, I always felt like, uh, whenever I saw something that was very polarized, I always wanted to be involved on both sides of it so I could really understand what was happening. So because I just, I just assume that if people are, if there's a big strong pull on one side of a topic, then it means there's a lot of people that are really getting some value from it. So that's, that's really how I approached my now 20 years in strength conditioning and fitness and in the gym. And I'm just sort of at this point, you're right, where I'm just like, look, I can see through a little bit of all of these, you know, what people say and know that you do want to look good. You do care about it.

You shouldn't feel bad for wanting to look good you do care about it you shouldn't feel bad for wanting to look good and you shouldn't you shouldn't feel bad for wanting to like be a badass and push yourself and uh lift something heavy periodically uh it's just that someone needs to reflect back to you when you're doing it too much and it's actually creating like a negative impact on your life you know it's like a alcoholic in a way it's like dude you're a you're a, you're an intensity holic. Like you're over here, you're over here so committed to getting your performance up that you forgot and you don't even recognize that you are tired all day. Your libido is just totally absent. You are carrying around three injuries at the simultaneously. Like you don't even see it because you're just so connected to this, like this other path. Yeah. And it can be especially hard for really high functioning athletes and people who have like a high level athletic background like yourself, because you are so used to the discipline and the routine and also pushing through pain and discomfort. And I think one of the

best ways to tell that you are either overdoing it or overtraining is something that you already touched on, which was just a lack of passion. Because oftentimes, for people who are high level, like, like you guys, you, you'll work regardless, and you'll work hard no matter what. But it's really a sign when you don't feel that drive anymore, even if it's just like a mental or emotional feeling, you're still going through the steps, but you're like, I just don't love this the way I used to love it. That's kind of a real, a sign for people that that might be easier to pick up on than just being tired and sore, which you're used to pushing through anyway. Yeah, totally. I mean, if you wake up and you're not psyched to go to the gym, you're not motivated

by it, then that's there's something, you know, something systemically is going on that we can, we need to back up a little bit and re and reevaluate. Yeah. So I wanted to step back then we were talking about your 2016 CrossFit game season, and then you were entering like grid league right after, right. And I think you were saying that you were, you were burnt out. And so you started working with OPEX, right? Where you kind of just started, maybe started sort of over again, a little bit started working from the ground up with kind of a different attitude towards your training. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, sure. I mean, first, let me just clarify, I work with OPEX through the whole thing. So from 2012 till, uh, essentially now, I mean,

that that's been, that's been my, my, my support system in terms of a coaching organization, uh, for my personal growth. Um, but yeah, when I was, so I competed at the, at all those high levels under the guidance of my coach that was from OPEX. And the beauty of having just an individual coach who understands the full spectrum of, you know, health and fitness, knows that elite fitness is also kind of in the unhealthy spectrum for humans, could see and could listen and could really be receptive to my feedback of like, I'm not right. Something just feels way off. Uh, so stepping back, uh, or sort of connecting with, with the coach I had at the time to lay out some very, very honest, uh, vulnerable stuff. Like, look, I'm, I don't, I don't feel motivated. I don't even feel like I'm strong enough to do this, that, and the other thing. I am in pain.

I'm hurting in these areas. Let's get back on a regeneration training cycle. And from there, what things looked like were, and the way I explain it to people is like, if the sport looks fast, complex, and heavy, then the path to get healthy from that is to go slow, simple, and light, essentially. It's like go to the other end of the spectrum. Just like what people do in professional sports when it's off-season. Football players don't finish the Super Bowl and then the next week decide to go and put on pads and hit each other. Like that's just, I mean, that would be, people would look at that. Even like the lay person would look at that and be like, that just is,

that doesn't make sense. But in fitness, there's a, there's a misconception that it's like, well, it's a year round sport. You got to get better. And the only way you can get better is to keep pushing on the, on the high end of intensity. So my training essentially just went, you know, all those, all those kinds of descriptive words. And, um, and, and that's, it's funny because a lot of that is what, what the movements in bodybuilding actually, when bodybuilding is done with, uh, you know, with, with, with purpose, um, where you're building longer time under tension,

uh, in muscle contractions for hypertrophy gains, what, what happens is that you, you slow down, you, you regain some control, uh, you know, higher time under tension means lower loads. And, um, and then from a conditioning standpoint, the training was simply about aerobic base building, which is more like doing long extended sustainable work sets, not 30 second all out sprints on the assault bike. and we don't know each other personally, but from following you and following the kind of work that you do, I feel like maybe you'd have less of a problem with this than some athletes, but was there ever sort of an ego hit for you doing this where it did, it's not like you're starting from the bottom and you, you know, have no, whatever, but you're doing something that's very different and, um, it has a different goal. Was there, was that ever challenging for you or was it just you immediately switched like, all right, I've got a new goal and this is how I'm going to reach it? No, no, no, no. I'm two and a half years removed from that and I still have an ego and I still

struggle with, gosh, maybe I'm not as good as I used to be or I'm not as good as I used to be and or I'm not as good as I used to be. And what does that mean about me? And but at the time, I would say I wasn't struggling with it so much because pain is it's just a powerful motivator. You know, you if anybody's experienced like severe pain or, or chronic pain, or just not feeling well, like that kind of trumps everything. Like it kind of can overcome ego pretty quickly. You're like, I don't really give a shit about whether I can do anything that looks fancy in the gym.

I just don't want my shoulder to hurt every night when I sleep. And I don't want my back to be sp you know, spasming on me, you know, when I'm driving the car. And I don't want to sort of like feel like I'm crashing in the middle of the day because my energy is so off. Those were kind of the powerful motivators that kept me going on a day to day basis. And there were, you know, there were a couple months where I just, I had to trust that the process was going to work. I mean, I still, I still enjoyed training and I, I quickly started to fall in love with training again when I had kind of a new way of approaching it. So that was, yeah, that was super powerful for me.

And that got, that got me ahead of the, oh, am I ever going to be able to do muscle ups again? And Oh, I'm, you know, this, this number's coming down, but it's actually once I got healthy and healed and had to now, okay, so now here I am in this healthier body, recognizing that my lifestyle is very different than it was when I was at my peak of competitive fitness saying, okay, well, I feel good. Part of me wants to get back into the grind of like pushing performance and feeling those feelings of being an elite level athlete. But there's a, there's a drawback or there's a downside to that, which I don't know if I can balance in my life right now. And so that's when the ego thing started to kind of creep back in.

And I, you know, every year when the open comes around, since I last participated or regionals happened the last two years, and I watched my competitors go after it. And certainly in 2017, I watched the field and I was there on the floor watching and I was like, I could smoke these guys. And, but I didn't put in the work. I hadn't done the, you know, the months of lead up training. And it was just like, that was just my ego kind of getting in there and saying something when I realized that like to, to be on that floor means pushing through lots of work, grinding it out, probably pushing my, you know, my body into kind of a deficit again. So yeah, that was a long-winded answer to your question.

That's good. That's good. And I want you to talk a little bit more about this because I think it's refreshing for someone in your position, especially as people who follow you and your fans on social media and stuff. We all tend to fall victim to that, looking at someone else and thinking that they're always sorted out and perfect and they've never had a bad day. And we use that to be even harder on ourselves. And I think for anybody, whether you're a high level athlete, you're recreational, you're not into sports at all,

whatever it is you're into, I think that goal setting is always very important. And that goal doesn't have to be an event or a competition. It can be whatever you want, but having something to work towards, it just gives you a reason to have a little bit of discipline and routine and many goals to hit and all of that's very healthy. But I would love for

you to, if you have any words of wisdom for us, because you touched on this, like sometimes ego does come back up. And sometimes I kind of like maybe have a little pity party about how I'm not as strong as I was five years ago. And I think we're both in the same age group here. We're like mid 30s, where we totally can still be performing at a high level and have a great deal of fitness and all of that stuff. But a lot of people at this age are also maybe dealing with a first like really bad injury or starting to deal with like the effects of life and kids and a busy job making us tired the way it didn't when we were 22. And so I hear over and over again, and I'm guilty of this too, sometimes having these little pity parties where we're at the gym, we're like, oh, I remember the day that I could squat this. And now I can

only squat this. And we all know that that's not helpful. Like that's not helping you. It's not training. It doesn't make you feel better. It doesn't make you suddenly lift more, but we all do it. What are some things maybe that you've told yourself or some things that you've done or process you put in place to like, keep that bullshit to a minimum? That's funny. I feel like the 30s are going to be defined by just like thinking about 20s. Like, oh, when I was, and then you get to your 40s and you're like, oh shit, I mean're like oh shit i mean i don't know i don't know what it'll be like my way through my 30s i was actually sorted out yeah exactly yeah totally um well i i what would i find i mean certainly the the transition to functional

bodybuilding at the age of 32 really a 30 you into my mid-30s, has been a huge gift that I was kind of given, and then I continue to sort of work hard to nurture. And what I mean by that is, by coming back to the gym and training the same way I've always trained, it's hard not to compare myself to the old me. But I'm choosing to explore aspects of my fitness in a new way that don't have anything to do with how good I was relative to the regional field in 2015, 2016. That means exploring new movements. That means attempting to combine, you know, different training methodologies within one. It's seeing how I can develop strength in new places that I've never really,

you know, that weren't really a part of the sport of fitness. Because the sport of fitness, while it was like, you know, all this variation, it was really like a small subset of stuff that we had to be really good at. And, uh, and then just endure a lot of, you know, discomfort and pain and, um, aerobic volume. Um, so, so that has certainly helped me. Uh, the other thing is, and I kind of touched on this and I alluded to it. I got into fitness with the mindset many, many years ago that had nothing to do with my performance. It was more like I'm here to feel really great. I want to build confidence. I want the workout to fill me up. It's the best part of my day. You know, when I – up until – I think up until I started doing CrossFit, I don't really – and maybe a little bit in collegiate strength and conditioning when like we would write down numbers on a piece of paper

and hand it back to our strength coach. Outside of that, I really don't think I ever paid much attention to the numbers that I lifted, except for, of course, bench press, which everyone wanted to know how much you bench. But outside of that, it didn't matter to me. What mattered more was I felt good. I got a pump. My muscles were looking good. I was looking good. I was feeling good. And so I've been able to hold on to some of that for a long time and remember that and remember it now.

Um, and I think maybe people that are listening, some listeners can connect back to something that was like, I got into fitness to feel good. I remember those early days of feeling good. I was like brand new to CrossFit and you were scaling all the way back to nothing. You were not finishing first you were finishing dfl you know it was uh it was it was like completely not about your numbers it was about like you were getting this feeling that was making you you know addicted in a sense and so how do we reconnect with the feeling and less with the numbers on the bar? Because the reality is that the numbers on the bar and the feeling, they're not correlated.

They don't go together. And in fact, there's kind of like an inverse relationship in some instances for people, especially that are kind of feeling that burnout and that ache. And you totally nailed it with like, yeah, people are getting into this age range. And life is starting to get real. You know, you're, you're not, you're not in your 20s, where you can kind of make mistakes, or you kind of are like, I can, I'll figure it out. Like, I'll get into my like, now you're like, Oh, I, I'm in my 30s. Like, I kind of have consequences. Like, and I, I can't, I can't waste another five five years because I need to build something that will turn into a steady or stable career in my 40s or whatever. Or you have kids like me.

I've got two kids now. I mean, those things change the landscape of what you can bring into a physical fitness scenario dramatically. And, but that just, so that what that does, it just changes the equation a little bit. The inputs, the outputs are all kind of getting different. And what we're really trying to do is balance that equation so that you feel awesome. And so just focusing on that feeling is what I'm trying to get people to focus on more. And yeah, it's like my message and the thing that I'm preaching is not going to land well on the 22-year-old fire breather who's just getting after it because they're just like, what?

I just want to throw down eight hours a day and I feel great. I sleep 10 hours a day. Like, and I feel great. You know, I've, I sleep 10 hours a night. I recover like, you know, an infant and I'm, I'm good to go. You're like, just email me in five to 10 years. Yeah. And I'll still be here. Yeah, exactly. So you mentioned before that you, you work with and you've worked with for a long time and you went through all the OPEX courses. I'm a big fan of James Fitzgerald myself. I just love the kind of, not only the message,

but how he communicates it. And I'm hearing certain things, I think, in the messages that you're saying are sort of echoed. Do you think that his or the OPEX kind of program or platform or what they, they teach? Do you think that that's informed your coaching style or your kind of approach to life in general? Oh my goodness.

Yeah. I mean, I a hundred percent, I met, let's see, I met James in 2010. Like, and total fan boy,

like at the time I was like, yeah, he like, you know, he was like, kind of like an idol at the time, like, I was following everything he was posting on his on his training blog at the time, before he had, he had just started to talk about the release of his CCP program. So his coaches education program. He was the CrossFit Games champ. He was the man. And I was down at the Games for the first time as an athlete, team athlete, 2010, getting some food at the hot bar at Whole Foods. And around the corner walks James Fitzgerald. And I just freaked out. I totally freaked out.

But I think I had like two months after that I was scheduled to go to his course. And, um, anyway, he walked right up to me and he just big smile, shook my hand and was like, you know, uh, almost like he knew me, but he didn't know me yet. And of course I knew him. And anyway, it's, I try to remember that, that, that moment because I have that moment a lot with people when they meet me. And when I bump into, you know, young CrossFitters who followed me for some years and, uh, anyway, he was super gracious and it was really sweet. And I met his wife at the time and it was just

awesome. Um, and they of course became really good friends. I mean, they were both at my wedding, uh, and I became a client of James a couple of years later and became one of his first athletes that he coached to the CrossFit games. And so I've been coached by him and his team for, for years been part of his education system since its inception was one of the first CCP, you know, candidates to go through the process in the early days. And yeah, I mean,

it has informed almost everything that I do. And alongside, you know, one of the head coaches down there at OPEX, I basically helped evolve and create functional bodybuilding. So yeah, that's just a kind of a long winded answer again. No, yeah, because it just seems like you both have a very sort of like level-headed, methodical research and experience-based approach to this stuff and less about like, yeah, like we'll kill you and you'll sleep and you're dead kind of thing, which again, there's like two years in your 20s when everybody does that. So go ahead and then come to me when you're done. But just sort of this approach where

it's like, it's about, and there's, there's, because there are two, there are two different paths here when we're talking about things like CrossFit or any kind of athletic endeavor. There are the people who are trying to compete at the highest level and then there is everybody else. And everybody else, we can still be competitive and we can still challenge ourselves and work hard. But we also, and again, increasingly as we get older, we want to think about being healthy and strong with a longevity focus instead of a like acute, I just want to be really fit for this one thing in three months kind of situation. So, I mean, is that something that you're really trying to kind of focus on in the work that you're doing? The coaching you're doing is more of like you can you can have both to an extent like you can still be super sexy.

You can still be buff and strong, but like we're looking at ways to help you live a healthier life longer rather than sort of like burnout next year, like a supernova because you just crushed a CrossFit workout or whatever. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, and I just simplify it a bit more than that. And rather than be like, I don't, I'm not here to push my agenda on anybody. I'm just here to really try and listen to my clients and the people that want to work with us and be sure that I'm always reflecting back to them what they say that they want from the beginning. And when they say they want something, I try and poke holes in it and be like, okay, well, what do you really want?

Like, and do you know, okay, what you're saying is this, and do you know that it could mean this and that that could lead to that. And, and then that's, that's the job of a coach. And that's the job of all of us in the fitness profession is to actually listen to our clients and then use all the experience and the knowledge that we have to do best by their wishes not to impose our own like you should do this like someone comes to me like hey i want to be competitive in crossfit like okay cool so are you ready to do this this this this this and they're like yep i'm like and you understand that like being a competitor in the sport means that you're going to feel like this sometimes and it's going to take this.

They're like, totally. I'm like, great. Let's go for it. I'm not – I know that competing for three or four years in CrossFit might not make the next few years feel great. But if you know that going into it, then who am I to say that you shouldn't do it? I want to support you. Um, but the reality is that most people come in and they say, I want to, I want to feel, I want to feel better. I want to look a little bit better. I want to have better energy. So if, if I take that and I'm like, dude, you got to get on my,

my CrossFit agenda where we compete, you know, every day in the gym. Cause that's like, dude, you got to get on my CrossFit agenda where we compete every day in the gym because that's – then that's me pushing my – you got to look at what you're actually giving people and knowing – because I know enough to know that if I do that for that person, it probably won't work to get them what they want. So I have to actually work to provide them with what they need. And then of course there's – sorry, I'll just add this one last point i know i'm kind of running on but if there's a client that comes in who has their stuff in order meaning they they sleep they eat well they you know take care of themselves they're not stressed to the max they want to look good they want to they want to do fitness they want to try some stuff and yeah i, I'll give them some CrossFit. I'll give them some 21-15-9. They can handle it. So long as they have all this stuff in check, then I'm not afraid of it by any means. Right. Cool. And you have a physical gym for in-person training as well as you do online coaching, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Revival Strength is the business and it's also the name of the gym that we have here in San Rafael. We run an OPEX license facility. So that means we use the model

kind of developed and handed down by OPEX, which is individual design is our, our model of the coaching clients here. Everybody that comes to revival strength at the physical location has an individual program. That individual program is designed by one of the coaches on our staff. And these clients come in and they train during four hours where there's a coach on the floor to facilitate their work, help facilitate their workout, answer questions, give them coaching tips, exactly what you would see a group fitness coach do. However, each person in the gym at any given time is doing their own unique training. There's not small group. There's not a whiteboard with one workout for everybody to do.

It's 10 people doing 10 different things. And that's, that's, that's how we that's just how we've operated since we opened. And then for the online programs, can you you can purchase sort of standard programs, but you can also get individualized programs if you're a remote client? Correct. Yeah, our remote client base is a mixture. Well, I'm sorry, I consider our remote clients our individual design clients that don't live here. So they get the same exact service that we give to our onsite clients without the physical touch points

where they come into our gym. So they're getting individual programs written, they're getting monthly consultations with our coaches to ensure that they're still developing this, deepening this relationship and having those accountability talks and those reflective talks about like, is this aligned with your purpose? What is your purpose now? And then there are online training programs that I've created several, a couple education programs that we've created as well, all of which are being distributed worldwide to a lot of different people that are getting a chance to experience our training

philosophy and methodology, but not in an individualized, customized way. Okay. And how much of your workday is broken down into working with with individual clients at this point? Like what's a workday look like for you typically? Great question. Yeah, it's, it's changed, it changes often. But I'm certainly in more of the building the business, building up my coaching staff around me, and designing online training material or marketing material or content for free content to go out. So I still have a group of online clients and individual clients that I coach in person here, but that number is much smaller than it used to be. So I'd say about one day a

week, I'm doing individual coaching. That's writing programs, doing consultations. One day a week, I'm kind of like all dedicated to content creation, whether that's spending time on the floor doing video or photographs for functional bodybuilding or for our training programs or writing Instagram captions or blog material, things like that. The other days are spent on staff development, meeting with my staff, helping them enhance their coaching ability and really creating coaches around me that are delivering the high, high level of coaching service beyond what I, what I feel like I can deliver these days, which is a really, you know, impress. I mean, it's a, it's a powerful thing to see. And then I'm on the phone and doing consultations with new prospective clients throughout the week. So we get, Hey, I want to work with you. I do all of our sales calls. So I talk to people all over the world about, you know, why they want to do individual design. And that's a really happy, fun part of the job for me. And then there's,

you know, there's about 12 hours of me training my body. So that's a full day of work, you know, just training on the floor. So that kind of fills up a, you know, a full week and and then of course there's um you know every day there's administrative email stuff and i'm um you know keeping keeping that part of some parts of the business going in that way as well so i i wear a lot of different hats right now and um and and until something becomes clear to me that's like, this is not the job I should be doing, I'm still doing it. And the last time I had that feeling was around coaching over 60 clients. I was like, you know what?

I can't keep this up. I can't keep up coaching 60 individual clients and hold up the rest of the people around me in this business. So that's when I started to remove myself from taking on new clients and sort of passing on the torch to my coaches that work for me. Yeah. I mean, that's a lot. Knowing when to delegate things, I think is a very important part of managing a successful business. But how much do you like doing the employee kind of stuff and the administrative stuff and the writing and the social media? How much do you like that?

Because I think a lot of times people, if they want to open a gym or they want to even do like a, want to be a trainer, an online coach, and they think about the coaching part only. And then when they get the harsh realization about how much business stuff has to, has to happen too. Is that something that you learned that you actually really quite like and you're good at, or is that a part that's sort of

like it has to be done? Um, well, you know, it's interesting. Like I, I got in to coaching and I was like, Oh, I love coaching. Um, But as the years went on and I started to become a business owner and then started to kind of take on different roles, I realized that I really just, my ultimate goal was to like make a positive impact on a big group of people. Whether I'm the coach that teaches you the thing or gets you to make the adjustment to the way you eat that has an impact positively on your health, or if it's another coach, that actually didn't matter to me. I just wanted to see people having success. And when I realized that I could have an ability to impact more people by stepping into a different role, then I welcomed it.

Now, the part that was hard was that I was a really good coach. I still am a really good coach in the way I feel. I mean, I'm confident in that. I was not a very good administrator or business owner in terms of the business side of things. I had to learn all that stuff, just like I had to learn how to be a good coach. And so it was like, oh, I had to start over again. But it was very much a welcomed challenge, because I could see that the more I put into it, the more I could have a positive impact on the people around me. And when I see coaches succeeding that work for me, this was, this is a big, big reason why I actually changed the model of my business. I used to own a group fitness facility. And then I, I, now I own this type of business where we focus on individual coaching because I saw coaches getting

burnt out time and time again in the group fitness model and nobody really being able to hold on to a, to, to the, to the career aspiration of being a fitness coach. It was like, I did it for a couple of years and then I was out. A couple of years, then I was out. And whereas here, I started this because I want to see the coaches that work for me to be here in 10, 15, 20 years, still doing fitness as a career. And it's really rewarding to see that starting to happen, where they're paving a way to a sustainable future, both in terms of like, life fulfillment, work fulfillment and income. And so it's like, it's cool. And yeah, so I really, I welcome it. And I'm not gonna lie that, you know, there have been times when

I've been, I've gotten really down because, but it comes back to just recognizing that I wasn't good at something. And I was like, damn, I gotta, I gotta just take a little slice of humble pie and realize that I, I don't, I don't know this yet. And I got to work hard to get better. So you come from like a place, I was coming from a place of like kind of the top of my game, like really, you know, high level coach that was getting a lot of business to then being like, okay, I'm going to, I got to take my coaches and make them high level coaches. And that means I have to be a mentor, a guide, an educator. I got to run better business systems. I got to do better reporting. I have to stay on top of a lot of

things that I haven't yet mastered or it's going to take a long time to master. Right. But having the approach that learning a new thing isn't like a roadblock and a reason to feel like you suck. It's a challenge to learn something new and just kind of make your game even more well-rounded, right? I think that's how we should kind of all be approaching the challenges that come up in life. Yeah, that is how I think we should all be approaching it. It's hard to have that mindset when you're in it, I've come to find out, especially when there's sort of like, I don't know, like the unknown coming in the future. There's risk at play. I don't know if this is going to work out. This business, it's in its infancy. Is it going to work out? Meanwhile, I'm over here sucking at what I'm doing and I don't know if it's going to work out. It's

like, that's scary. It's super scary. Whereas if you're in a really comfortable position, you know that you're like taken care of. There's not a lot of fear for the future. And you have this new challenge that gets presented to you, then it's like, great, let's be let's all be beginners periodically and try something new. I mean, I tell that to clients, I'm like, hey, why don't you just feel like a beginner again, and try a new movement. And they're like, cool, like this is Yeah, this can be fun, right? Rather than getting frustrated that you still you know, you're not good at something. But when there's a risk at play, when may you know being bad at something might mean that like next month like you don't get paid um that gets it's hard to to stay in the mindset of like

yes a new welcome challenge like it's like no it's like i might the bottom might fall out from under me yeah but it can also be a very powerful incentive too right like it's the whole cliche thing that with the greater risk comes a greater reward too because yeah you're right it is it is a lot easier to take on a challenge that is fun and exciting but really doesn't pose a huge risk to you it's like if you don't like this then you don't have to do it versus like pouring your heart and soul into a business. But if you if you stick to it, and you do work hard, and you pour your heart and soul into it, and it's successful, it's, it's a, you know, infinitely greater reward that you get. So I guess, I mean, that's the reason why most people aren't business owners,

right? I mean, it's the risk and stress and the work that it takes is not for everyone. And that's okay. Completely. Yeah. So you, when you made the switch from a competitive athlete to a business owner, how did you keep your health and fitness in check? Because you mentioned in your like day-to-day work schedule, there's still plenty of time for you to work out. But one of the things I hear from gym owners and coaches is like, they didn't see it coming, but their, their own fitness suffers because they're so focused on the fitness or wellness of others and also the business side of things. And they're like, I'm in a gym all day and I never get to work out. So how did you, how did you keep your own health and fitness like a priority? And how

did you, how did you do that when you were this busy trying to make a business work? Well, that's, yeah, that's a good question that I think goes back. I got to go all the way back to just, I think my competitive days of owner and I was coaching a lot, but, um, you know, I knew the work wasn't going to get done on, on its own. I had to protect time. Uh, so protecting time in my schedule was always something that's something I've done for 10 years, uh, since I first kind of stepped foot into the fitness industry as a coach, um, on my schedule, this is when I'm working out and that's it. And then nothing else gets booked then. Um, and yeah, like it may have been that, like I used to book four hours a day for that. Now I booking two hours or 60 minutes to 120 minutes, depending on the day. Um, but that's just changed with like my, my, my goals and my

priorities in life. So blocking it off in my schedule is just was was key. And then also just the thing I've always believed, which is like, I got to, I got to walk the talk. So to speak, my clients, I have a much easier time. I recognize than clients do, because my office is literally one step away from the gym floor. So when I want to take a 60 minute break from work, I can literally go get 60 minutes of training. And it's just it happens that quickly, whereas somebody who's got an office that's 30 minutes away from my gym, that means they got to get out of work, they got to drive here, they got to train, then they got to drive home. So I get that it's harder for other individuals, but I still need to make that commitment to myself to prioritize movement.

So movement is part of our recipe for health, longevity, wellness, and success and fitness. And I have to block that time off. And so I continue to do that. Even if it means not being able to take that one call or that one meeting that somebody was asking for and having to push back a podcast like this several weeks to say, Hey, this is my next available opportunity. And yes, I'm, I'm saying that it's my next available opportunity because I have 10 hours of training I need to do this week for my physical body. And yes, I'm, I'm saying that it's my next available opportunity, because I have 10 hours of training I need to do this week for my physical body. And I can't, I can't fit you in yet. So but that's, that's just, I feel like that is really respected amongst most people is seeing like, oh, wow, you really take time for yourself, because that's where most people struggle. And I think they've always, I've always inspired,

people have looked up to me and my ability to kind of have boundaries around my physical movement time and really making sure it's the priority. And then the last thing I'll say is you want to be efficient in life, you figure out the things that help improve your efficiency.

And movement always makes me more efficient in work. So if I could spend three hours trying to knock out training programs, but if I go and train for an hour, and then do two hours of training programs, I actually get more done. So that's something I've just been I've been like a scientist around like I've, I've tracked where i get the most out of my day and it's always when i build in pockets of movement to actually encourage blood flow to my brain to to to you know wake up certain energy um you know pathways and uh so yeah sitting sitting for longer hours you know and trying to cram more work in as gym owners out there, you're actually not helping anybody out because... Yeah, that's the worst. Sitting all day is like the worst for your productivity.

Totally. It's counterintuitive. And it's good that you're showing that to your clients too, because I think, like you said, that is the hardest thing for a lot of people. And people really think like, if I take this, quote unquote, selfish time to work out when I have kids and I have a busy job, and I have all these tasks I need to be doing, that's, that's selfish and terrible. But when you're you're showing like, hey, look, I can build this time in for myself that makes me more productive and a better, maybe father and business owner and all of these things. And look, the world did not explode, because I took two hours today to work out for myself and people seeing it, it helps kind of really internalize and reinforce that they're able to do that stuff too. So, and, and one of the things you kind of sit in a similar vein, you talk about on social media and stuff that having a warm

up practice for your, for your workouts should be similar. Like you should build this into your workout instead of making it like, Oh, I guess I gotta, I gotta do a quick warmup here for five minutes. So I don't hurt myself. Like make it a part, an essential part of the workout that's as important as the more fun, sexy stuff, like how much you bench, um, because it's, it is important. And so having that attitude where it's just this kind of like crappy, boring thing that you sort of have to do, and you're going to half-ass your way through it, you're not doing yourself any favors. Yeah, completely. I mean, that's definitely built into the functional bodybuilding principles is the efficiency thing.

It's like every aspect and every portion of your workout really matters. So let's make it actually purposeful and let's make it help you in some way. And you can stop the whole charade of going for a quick jog and doing some PVC pipe passers and thinking that that's doing anything for you. Cause it's not, it's not getting you ready for your workout and it's not actually improving your shoulder mobility and it's, it's doing nothing. So let's make it, you know, something that, that that's, that's meaningful. Yeah. I love that. Okay. And you, you offer you you offer nutrition programs as well. Is that true? Yes. But the way we offer it is unlike, you know, some, some companies out there. So

all of our individual coaching clients are coached in their nutrition and nourishment. So we, we take people through a multi step process to ensure that they've developed good eating habits, a good understanding of food quality, and a good understanding of like how to prepare food for themselves for coaching our individual clients in nutrition. We have found over the years that it's essential to build up sort of competency in our clients in their ability to navigate the nutritional world from a standpoint of, can they prepare food for themselves? Do they know how to shop for themselves? Do they know what good quality versus bad quality is? Do they know how to actually eat their food? Meaning, do they sit down, chew it, slow down,

or are they wolfing it down? We build them up kind of from, you know, a base level and make sure that all of those competencies are there before we start to dive into like nutrition prescriptions in the way of numbers like calories or macros or whatever. And that really has, I mean, that works for people long term. Like if they, they stick to that plan, and they re educate themselves, and they arm themselves with tools, then they're going to be successful for the long haul, whereas I can give you a macro program, and you can follow it perfectly for a year and have great results. But when that when that day comes where it stops working for you, you still don't know any of the things that went into developing that macro prescription. You don't understand why you're doing that in the first place.

So that's kind of our nutrition coaching and our nutrition programs. With that said, I have this online training program called Awaken Training Series, and I have a nutritional accompaniment to that, which is a series of 12 videos where we, where me and one of my coaches, you know, co-educate on all the topics I just mentioned. So it's not a nutrition program in the way that you're going to get like, you know, a food law, a food template or something like that. It's more, let's learn how to eat for the rest of our lives. And when you're ready, here's the, you know, you'll be, you'll be ready to eat for the rest of our lives. And when you're ready, here's the, you know, you'll be, you'll be ready to take on the macro prescription.

Yeah, I love that. And I think that obviously that aligns very well with the kind of coaching and training that you're doing. It's like this personalized nutrition approach where it's more about learning and educating and empowering people. And that's something that I see a lot in, in my side of the world. because I do I write for paleo magazine, and I've hosted their podcast, and I'm very deep in the trenches of like, the new sort of trends with nutrition, and everyone kind of jumped on the keto bandwagon. And then everyone was like carnivore, and everyone's fasting now and all this stuff. And it's really it seems to be the people who are really kind of the most sorted out are the people who who take the time to educate themselves on some of the basic, pretty much

fundamental understandings of human nutrition and what works the best as a baseline for most people. And then from there, you have to do the work of experimenting and figuring out what your goals are and your unique physiology and your challenges and then personalizing it from there. So no one size fits all approach is going to work for anybody, everybody all the time. And as you said, like a three month macro plan that probably everybody in the world has tried at least once in their life, like you can pretty much guarantee you're going to lose some weight when you do that. But then what happens

at the end of that three months? And what happens when you don't want to count your macros anymore, or you get tired of whatever, you know, so I think that this approach is something that's takes a lot more, maybe work and a little bit more time, but it's absolutely more valuable in the long run, because eating is something you're not going to avoid, whether you like to fast or not, you got to do it. So yeah, I like that approach. I agree completely. Yeah. So how do you eat? I know that this, this might be a boring question to you, but everybody loves it. Everybody loves peeking into like the fridges of, you know, well, first of all, people with six backs. So people who are as lean as you are, um, but are also

performing, you know, at a high level, what kind of, what's your like, you know, daily diet look like? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I, I have, I've gone through all the different phases and trends. And, um, I think what I always come back to that feels best for me is, uh, eating essentially like a, a paleo type diet, you know, meat and vegetables. I do more animal fats than I do, you know, nuts and seeds. And I use carbohydrates as a basically just like a supplement to my training. So when I'm training a lot, I'll eat more carbohydrates. When I'm not training that much, I eat fewer carbohydrates and those carbohydrates are not necessarily from paleo sources. They're just, you know, like rice or they're gluten free sources is really my, my, my deal. Um, so in high, high training times I've, you know, you, people would say, Oh,

you're high carb. Yeah. I'm probably eating 300 to 400 grams of carbs a day. But I'm not in a high training phase right now. So I'm not kind of on that spectrum. So I titrate carbohydrates based upon my energy requirements and the training intensity of my gym time. But yeah, it's like varied meats as much as I, you know, I try and vary my protein sources, um, daily, weekly, uh, try and make sure that I'm getting the highest quality meats and fish and eggs that I can. Um, I've been, you know, it's interesting, like in the last three months, you know, we had, uh, our, our daughter was born in late December.

So my sleep has been really disrupted for several months now. And, um, the stress load that I'm under because of my sleep deprivation and just the rest of life, it's kind of like made me not, not process and digest foods very well. So my guts take, takes a hit, like my, my microbiome or my, you know, digestive health is something I can just, I always come back to as like, that's the indicator when my stress load is too high. So recently I've kind of been eliminating all sort of, you know, classic offenders. So I was like, I had some, I'd have some dairy here and there. I'm like, okay, no dairy. You know, I was like, okay, let's take out anything that's

like potentially an allergen or anything that would kind of cause me some, uh, some, some GI distress. And so that's been kind of a, uh, a challenge in, uh, an experimental phase that I've been going through lately. Um recently, I just got a biome test done. Are you familiar with this? Yeah. Yeah. So I just I just got my results today. So I'm very curious to see if implement implementing some of the recommended foods or recommended foods to avoid on that list will help me at all. But what did we don't have to get too deep into it. But what were some of the things that they were saying, you know, add in or take out generally for you? Well, interesting enough, three things that I have. Well, I mean, it's not too interesting,

but because I know that that things that you're exposed to a lot can oftentimes lead to some issues. Um, but what rice and yams were kind of on my do not eat list. So, uh, whereas white potatoes were fine, white rice was like a, you should avoid it or you should like minimize it. But brown rice and yams were like, no go. Um, yeah, it was a little sad. And then the one that's even more sad, which I'm sure this one is actually, I'm like in denial about this, but I had four things that I was absolutely supposed to avoid. One of them was brown rice, which I eat brown rice cakes, like the, what's the brand name? But like, they're just, i don't know they're amazing and delicious and i eat them often but i'm gonna cut those out chestnuts were on my avoid list which i haven't had a chestnut in i don't even know how long so it's like now that you know you

can't eat them you're like there is a chestnut guy at the farmer's market that it's always they're always roasting them and i'm like i should, I should get some, but I never do. Um, but coffee, black coffee is on my list along with black tea. And I am just like, I am, I am beside myself. I'm like, uh, I, I actually had it. Uh, my, my intuitive sense was like, I got to stop drinking coffee. Like it's, it's, it's messing me up. Like I knew, I knew it. I've known it for months now, but I've just, I mean, I I'm addicted like any other good coffee drinker. I am, you know, I'm stuck. And so this is super sad, but maybe it's one of those things like, cause another, one of the huge allergens that people have. And if this ever happens to me, I'm going to jump off a bridge, but people become sensitive to eggs. We eat a lot of eggs, right?

And, but sometimes you find like, if you cut it out for a while and then you reintroduce it, that sensitivity goes away. So maybe cross your fingers for that. Maybe you just get rid of coffee. I can't believe I'm saying those words, but get rid of coffee for a little while, maybe get into matcha for a while or something. And then after you've cut it like completely out for a month, maybe you have a cup of coffee and see how it makes you feel. Well, and, and what I, what I'm curious to do more investigating on is with biome. It's like, they're, they're looking at this, not from an allergen perspective, but from a interaction with your microbiome. So I don't know that I'm allergic to, and maybe, maybe it's like, we don't, maybe no one even really knows like what the difference is, but, um, my microbiome is under, and the way they explain it is like, I have my, I'm not really handling stress well right now, which makes sense.

Cause I, I haven't had an uninterrupted night of sleep in over 100 days. So yeah, perhaps it is something that like when I actually get back to sleeping well and sleeping through the night and, you know, having my, my lifestyle items in check. Yeah, but I'm more of like, you know, talking about the egg thing, like I ditched eggs, you know, a month ago, because I was like, well, maybe this has caused me some problems and reintroducing this week and you know nothing changed in the whole process and comes to find out that that's one of my highly encouraged foods to eat on my list you know there's like 10 foods that are going to really help me and um so yeah it was again i it's too early to say whether this is like the answer that people need to go and seek out from Viome.

And I'm not like plugging them as a company yet, but definitely going to cut coffee out. I think I'm going to go cold turkey and I'm terrified. Man, well, we're all going to be watching very closely on social media about that. See if you don't have a smile on your face for a couple of days in a row. We know what happened. But seriously, try. I don't have a smile on your face for a couple days in a row, we know what happened. But seriously, try, I don't know, unless you hate it, try matcha because I don't find regular tea or even green tea to be a substitute for coffee at all. I'm like, who are you kidding? Like this doesn't taste as good and it's not the same caffeine, but green tea or matcha, if you make

it the way you want to make it, I don't know if you like it with like milk or you just black, but it does have at least as many antioxidants as coffee. It has almost as much caffeine. It's more caffeine than regular tea. And it doesn't, I think it's because it has L-theanine in it as well, but it doesn't give you maybe some of the jitters that coffee can give you some of that anxiety cortisol spiking stuff that coffee can do if you drink too much of it. So it wouldn't be, and I mean, maybe what you're saying is right. Like you're, you're dealing with a stress related issue right now anyway, with lack of sleep. So maybe just like caffeine at all costs, isn't the right idea. But even if you're trying to like wean yourself off a little bit, um, it might be, it might be worth having like a matcha here and there, try it out, you think well i'm gonna pick some up in a pinch and uh and it did say that green tea was was was on my you know

on my list of things that was fine for me to have so good matcha is just like the better version of green tea because instead of steeping the leaves you're drinking the ground leaves so you're getting literally all of the all of the goodness goodness. And I think it tastes better. So yeah, definitely do that and see how that works. Cause maybe you'll find a new, a new drink. Green tea is one of my super foods. So here we go. See, we're coming up, we're coming up with game planning, my addiction. I love it. Okay. And again, I don't want to keep you too much longer, but you mentioned, um, because I, again, I would say that I follow a very similar diet and that it's like paleo ish and like the word paleo, whether you like it or not, it just means like eating real unprocessed

foods. But you said that you like, um, a lot of like animal fats. So what kind of animal fats you do just like fatty cuts of meat or what do you, what do you like? Yeah, it's more of like. Are you cooking with ghee and delicious stuff like that? Yeah, I cook a lot with grass fed butter. So that's, that's kind of in my, in my day. And then from a meat perspective, yeah, I've been doing a lot more, um, bison, uh, you know, grass fed, uh, ground beef. Um, you know, if I were to have a choice of a steak, I'd go for like a New York strip and, uh, been doing a lot of lamb lately. So buying, um, uh, you know, lamb legs and roasting,

uh, like slow cooking them, excuse me. I used to be a big chicken guy and then just realized that I wasn't actually buying like good chicken and that chicken is just sketchy. And good chicken is crazy expensive for what you're getting. That's like a lot of building thing too. Everyone's just like chicken breast. And then when you actually buy like an organic chicken and it's like $40, you're like, maybe I should look at some other sources. Totally, right. Yeah, no, that's cool. I mean,

I just posted on Instagram as well, because I'm like obsessed with different like game meats and organ meats and awful and all the kind of like delicious, tasty, wild kind of game because I think think some of us, we just get stuck into this like rut where we're like, okay, the meats are chicken and beef, maybe some pork every now and then. Of course, like this kind of stuff can get boring. Even if it's delicious, you want to, you know, vary it a little bit and try some different things. And there's so much out there. There are so many, like you said, lamb and bison and, and goat and duck and all of these different things. And especially if you, if you're willing to kind of, I don't know, go outside

your comfort zone a little bit. Some of these things, like they taste way better than a chicken breast if you're willing to give it a shot. Yeah. Yeah, completely. I mean, I, if I had a little bit more time to get creative in the kitchen and, um, that would certainly be an area that I would be very open to, to kind of exploring because you're right. There's like tons of health benefits to eating organ meats that I think, you know, it's just not mainstream. So people aren't doing it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Well, maybe you'll have some time for some experimenting in the kitchen when you've had your first full night of sleep in however many months. Yeah, exactly. So are you, before I let you go, are you currently training for anything else? I mean, obviously it seems like your lifestyle is keeping you busy enough, but I know oftentimes with people who are used to performing at a really high level, it's painful when you don't have some kind of sort of physical or fitness goal on the horizon. Is there anything that you're thinking about?

Yeah, there, well, yes and no. I mean, it's kind of in my sights to, it has been. I mean, I'm turning 35 this year. So I'm like, oh, well, I'll be kind of a master's, you know, age bracket fitness athlete. So just thinking about maybe there's a, there's a, a competition to kind of re-engage in, in fitness at, at the 35 plus age division. Um, nothing specifically now I was really kind of thinking, uh, that the open in October would be my time. Um, but you know,

this was, uh, this was before the baby came and just realizing like, okay, having two kids is a little bit more full on than just the one. And so just trying to, I don't want to like over commit myself to something and get too far away from my priorities. Yeah, two kids is like a sport all its own, I would imagine. Yeah. All right. Well, Marcus, I won't take up any more of your time, but it's been a pleasure. I feel like I've, I've learned a lot already and I look forward to us actually meeting in person and having a chat, but I wish you luck in all of your, your work and endeavors that you're doing.

And we'll be watching and I'm going to watch your, your Instagram even more closely now to see how the no coffee thing goes. Awesome. Yeah. Well, I'll, I'll, uh, I will, yeah, I'll probably post about it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. We'll do it for you. Okay. Thanks, Marcus. I appreciate it. Thanks so much. Okay. That's it. Thanks everyone for listening. If you're enjoying muscle Maven radio, please give me a shout out. Leave a nice rating and review on iTunes under Shrugged Collective. Please and thank you. And feel free to share the love on social media.

Don't forget to tag Shrugged Collective and me at the Muscle Maven so I can thank you and give you a virtual high five for supporting us. And please join me next week where I'm speaking to yet another highly respected functional medicine physician, Dr. Emily Kybert, who also happens to be pregnant. I feel like all the doctors I'm talking to these days are pregnant. I don't know what's in the water, but we got to watch out. Anyway, we are going to be talking about hormones and their effect on strength training for women specifically because newsflash, I'm a woman, but we'll talk about the dudes too. Don't worry. There's plenty to get into there. So join me then and have a great week.