The Sevan Podcast - #36- Marcus Filly

Episode Date: May 21, 2021

@MARCUSFILLY @SEVANMATOSSIAN @BRIANFRIENDCROSSFIT The Sevan Podcast is sponsored by http://www.barbelljobs.com Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/therealsevanpodcast/ Sevan's Stuff: https://www.instagram.com/sevanmatossian/?hl=en https://app.sugarwod.com/marketplace/3-playing-brothers Support the show Partners: https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATION https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance.

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. You don't even have to do anything to work on a relationship. You can just look at your mate and mirror each other. Just shut the fuck up, hold each other's hands, and just face each other and mirror each other.

Probably powerful. I feel like I should have slicked my hair back for this. You do not need to only if you have manes like marcus philly and savon matosian do you need to you you have to you have to pull your hair back or people will say you look like you're homeless i look like i'm homeless marcus looks like a g god with his hair down. It's not a fair world. It's not a fair world. It's not the hair that's slicked back that makes you look homeless, I don't think. I think it's – Tell me, what is it, Marcus? I was really hoping you were going to say, it's not my hair slicked back that makes me look like a Greek god.

God damn it. Tell me, what makes me look homeless, Marcus? God damn it. Tell me, what makes me look homeless, Marcus? I mean, I'm just, I always feel a little insecure when I'm on a call with a couple gentlemen that have the ability to grow great facial hair. I just can't do it. It doesn't work for me. What happens when you grow?

My brother can't grow a beard at all. You know, we're a few years apart, same genes and no beard. Yeah, I tried growing. I played around with it a little bit. And then I remember in 2013, I like had some scruff going and I did fairly well at the regional event in NorCal. So I got some coverage. I came back to the gym on Monday to coach some of my personal clients. And I had this guy who just looked at me he's like hey hey uh yeah uh so you did good this weekend um you got to shave all that stuff off your face you look terrible on camera i was like oh thanks man so

he told me uh i didn't look good isn't it amazing that it's amazing the influence people have on us um i have this other podcast and the two guys i was doing it with were saying to me um hey we liked you better with a beard and so i haven't shaved in eight weeks that was it there you go i was yeah i was completely clean shaven and i'm like okay i can appease these people i want to apologize in advance my drink my my hot water and cayenne and ginger root water is very, very hot. So you guys are going to hear some slurping today. I know the listeners love that. Oh, yeah.

Because when a drink's hot, you got to slurp it, right? There's some like cooling down process as you kind of bubble it over your tongue. How do you like that cayenne ginger hot water? I like it. Replace it with your coffee. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's for habit not there's

no there's no medicinal effect like caffeine used to have on me but but i'm giving caffeine up for a year yeah i heard that i'm very curious about that because it's something that um i find it terrifies me to try and think about giving up caffeine for that long. And then at the same time, I'm like weaning off caffeine and just drinking decaf coffee. When I spoke to Dr. Nick, he said something like you're trying to get off of heroin and you're doing it five times a day. And then all of a sudden someone's like, no, it's really great to do if you just do it once in the morning. So I'm two weeks into quitting and Dr. Nick dr nick is like no i just take a shot of espresso before i work out and all of a sudden that gets in my brain and i'm like okay that's what i'll do i'll just take a shot of this i'm looking for an excuse um i saw it yesterday in an instagram post

um it was a picture of um a young a young what looks a young Siddhartha or a young Buddha. And the meme written over it or the writing over it was, Discipline breeds success. And since I was in my late 20s or something, I realized that. And discipline usually, for me, discipline means consistency and giving things up that aren't necessary. And I just hate waking up in the morning and being attached to this thing that I need every single morning. I just hate that thing running my life.

That means that I'm missing some discipline and that I'm not free. And the fact that there's a debate over whether coffee is good or bad for you means that it's bad for you what do i mean by that like when you hear pregnant women say oh can i just have a little bit of coffee or can i just have one glass of wine the second they say that they know i hear a woman say that i'm like oh she knows i'll take that as the and by bad i mean it's relative right sure your free crispy cream donut is significantly worse than... I don't think caffeine is fucking with your immune system. No.

There's also plenty of good studies done on long-term benefits of caffeine, but then that's potentially correlated to just the type of people that are having caffeine. I don't know. It's not super conclusive, but I'm not giving it up right now, at least. And Dr. Nick, who we had on the podcast, was saying it's a performance-enhancing drug. He thinks it helps your performance, and he even gave it a metric. said about one percent coffee or caffeine uh he said coffee but but i would say he meant caffeine and i would say that's true i see it right away i see all my um i spent a lot of time on the assault bike and the assault bike is not

nearly as fun if you're not hopped up on caffeine i I mean, right away I can, I can get to the RPMs I want to get to in the first minute when I'm on caffeine. And when I'm not on caffeine, it takes like three to five minutes to get to that. Like, I remember, uh, kind of looking into the, the band substance list pretty closely when I was playing the sport and caffeine's on there at certain quantities. And I was like, and I had like a tub of caffeine just, just to mix in with different pre-workouts and stuff like that. And I was like, Oh shoot, how much of this is going to be problematic? You know? Cause it just clears so quickly. It's like, you can't, I imagine they're like looking for somebody who's like taking super, super high doses, like on day of competition or something like that.

But it's clearly a banned substance because it's effective. Yeah, someone told me if you drank three Red Bulls in a row, you would pop for something. I don't know if that's true. Put it to the test. That's true. Marcus, do you know Brian? Just from seeing you know Brian? Uh, just from seeing you on the podcast here.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't think we've ever met at a competitions or anything like that. Many, many years ago, Brian and I met on Instagram. Um, he came down to a regional.

We did a, we started doing a podcast together at the regionals at the CrossFit regionals. And, uh, we just hit it off we thought at least i thought i've never heard him say it but i thought we were a good duo and so when i fired up the seven podcast again i reached out to brian he said okay i'll take a stab at it cool brian where are you located i'm in chicago work at a CrossFit gym here. Cool. Yep.

Are you still in Mill Valley? Just, I moved up to San Rafael. Mill Valley is, yeah, it's all the same county, about 15 minutes away. My folks still live in Mill Valley, and that's where I grew up, so pretty close by. I can't say this about Brian's neighborhood because I don't know a lot about it, but for people who are listening, Marcus lives about 100 miles north of me on the west coast of the North American continent in the bizarre state of California. And we both live in probably two of the most beautiful places in the world

in terms of the weather beautiful places in the world in terms of their, the weather's damn near perfect. And the, we live in, in small, relatively small enclaves away from the hustle and bustle and chaos of Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay area.

But he lives in an incredibly beautiful place. I think actually Mill Valley might be home to the, to one of the first, maybe the first marathon in the United States, the, the Dipsy trail. Is that true? Yeah. The Dipsy, the Dipsy rate. Well, the Dipsy trail is famous and it's a, it's one of the most famous foot races that we, that we've gotten North America, maybe the world maybe the world. But it's a 7.1-mile track from Mill Valley downtown. You go up and over Mount Tantal Pius, and you end up at the Pacific Ocean at the Stinson Beach. And, yeah, it's like everybody in this area, you know, at some point, I haven't done it yet, but tries to register and sign up to race this race.

And it's a really difficult, challenging run. I mean, seven miles and like I think the fastest times, raw times are like around an hour. So it's got a lot of elevation change. But I think they, you know, they run it a number of times a year. They run the dipsy. They run the double dipsy, which is like out and back and then they run the quad dipsy which is more of a marathon distance and um i recall like i think i remember back in the day kelly starrett and like the the mobility wad team did the quad dipsy and they did a little showcase on it. But yeah, it's a super tough track, but really famous. And it's like you got to get into a lottery to even get into the race.

People come from all over the place. And it's a unique race because they run it. It's not like they start by age. So the 70 plus year olds that are running, they get to go first. And then every minute on the minute for like an hour, they send out different ages. And so you go through all the ages of people that have been invited and you get an invite from placements in previous years. Then there's like people that just registered after and then they go all the way back to those age groups. that just registered after and then they go all the way back to those age groups so if you're like my age you're like in your mid-30s and you just wanted to get into the race you got into the

lottery like in order to qualify for next year you have to pass like a thousand people on the trail and it's like single track so it's crazy people running on this thing anyway more than you probably wanted to hear about but dipsy race is super cool look it up for sure i i parked in um i think it was mill valley once at the peats there in that little village and my mom and i we got there really early in the morning that's our downtown it looks like a little village doesn't it oh it's so nice it's so nice and uh has the tiny movie theater a couple hamburger joints a couple coffee joints i parked down there and then my mom and i walked to the pacific ocean and we walked back this is a handful of years ago you walked the dipsey trail that's it yeah and it was amazing

you walk through neighborhoods and all the staircases and the forest and it's crazy that you start there and end up at the pacific. It's absolutely nuts. Yeah, I know. Yeah. And the race gets started going up a flight of a thousand stairs, basically. So that's where people usually get their first dose of lactic acid burning in their legs. And they're like, what did I sign up for? Yeah, that first staircase is insane. Yeah. And it's kind of where rich hippies go to die right mill valley i guess so yeah i mean i i think of everything all those cities north of san francisco sort of as that

i mean as i've gotten older and i've like read more and more things outside of you know read more and more things outside of you know academics i start to hear about people like coming to marin county and pretty much like a lot of like the meditation spiritual movement has been you know centered in at spirit rock which is like a retreat center out in West Marin where, I mean, a lot of big names in like the, you know, meditation world who teach like mainstream meditation, like they spent a lot of time there. So yeah, it is, it is a very unique place. And I, it's crazy. Cause I'm, you know, like you said, a lot of people flock here at some point in their life. I was fortunate to be born and raised here. So like, I don't know much different. It is a sought after place in the world to live and to come experience, you know, climate.

And here I am just like, well, this is all I've known. So definitely been privileged to have a chance to live here. And this become my normal. and it's very expensive it's extraordinary extraordinarily expensive i mean it's like living in downtown london i mean it is it is it is something else um marcus and i met um if i remember correctly we met basically at a regionals on the floor right i mean you were you were yeah probably probably the first time we met basically at a regionals on the floor, right? I mean, you were, you were probably the first time we met, you just finished a grueling workout and I walked up to you and stuck a camera in your face. Yeah. I think it was probably 2014, I think was the first year

because, uh, yeah, I remember that we were at the, um, San Jose, um, whatever, San Jose State and playing in the in the arena and I knew I knew of you and so kind of felt like you know it felt pretty special that you were paying attention to me I think at the time I mean I was hanging I probably just liked your body don't get all excited I probably just like yeah probably yeah although i was hanging out at the hotel my wife was like my was my coach you know so she was back backstage with me and um we just kept bumping into you and your wife a bunch and i don't know there seemed to be like a genuine like you know liking of one another like it was positive uh outside of the competition floor so that that that was i think the beginning marcus is it okay to,

it's okay to start a relationship on a superficial, you can, you can like a man for his body and then, and then it turned into something else. Sorry, Brian, go ahead. Marcus,

are you making a conscious choice to describe it as playing the sport of CrossFit? Cause I don't think I've ever heard an athlete talk about it that way before. Uh, I'm, I'm wondering where that language really started for me. I mean, I, I do, you know, I, I kind of, I like to think about it as two different things I did. I mean,

I coached CrossFit and I was a big fitness, I mean, I'm still a fitness coach. So that was a big part. That's a big part of my life, but playing the sport. I mean, it was, it was a sport, you know, it was something I, i did that did not in the early years i confused it too much with what i was doing as a coach i thought i was one in the same i'm like um i'm coaching crossfit and i'm competing in crossfit it's like well you know i i had to really kind of un un unlearn that it was incorrect incorrect. Playing a sport, playing the sport of CrossFit, and then coaching fitness became very different. And I still look at them differently today, although there's lots of things I learned in both that carried over and supported the other, but

it's just not the same. I think it's it's a it's a word playing that's catching me off as opposed to competing because that's the one that i don't hear the athletes use that often so i didn't know if that was a mindset that maybe you had adopted after the fact um yeah perhaps i mean i still i talk about competing in the sport of crossfit um but you know i also uh maybe i'm maybe just cause I'm removed from the competitive side of it. Like, I'm not like out there trying to win anymore. I'm like, I look back, I'm like, yeah, it was a game I played, you know, like when I was in it, it was everything. It was the whole world. It was, you know, what, what I built my life around. And now I see is

like, this is a game that you can go and get good at. And it requires a tremendous amount of fitness, but it's still a, it's still a game to play just like basketball and football. And these are, these are games and, and the people that really love it to a certain degree. Like, I think they, you know, maybe have a chance at some more success, but you're seeing it now. There's people that are winning this thing that don't love it for the sport. They're not passionate about it. They're like, it's a job.

I'm just going to go and do it really well and beat people. So it's becoming more and more just like any other professional game that's out there that you play. And you can be passionate about it or you can just be like, hey, it's a way to get a paycheck. paycheck god it's a hard way to get a paycheck they're all hard they're all hard especially since the paychecks are not as big you know it's like nfl is hard you know and some people get a lot of money for it so maybe it seems like it's more you know doable but for the vast majority of people that attempt it to try and get the big payday, it's brutal. You know, you look at people's stories

who were in and out of the professional leagues for like a year and they were getting minimum wage and they were just getting, they're just getting handed terrible, you know, it's, it's a rough road, but you're right. CrossFit's painful, super painful painful super painful and uh but those people who are making it part of their life and they they have this you know it's everything to them it's their friends it's their community it's their work it's their gym it's and then also this thing that they compete in it they're not just looking at it one dimensionally like man this is hard to make fifty thousand dollars a year at they're thinking, this is hard to make $50,000 a year at. They're thinking like, this is awesome.

I get to do everything in my life around this one thing. And they're still not getting paid very well. Did you have a moment where you realized as you were getting older, as you were realizing where you fit in sort of the pantheon of CrossFit athletes that you're like, oh, shit, how am I going to make a living? of CrossFit athletes that you're like, oh shit, how am I going to make a living? Because here you are, you're about to get you, because I remember I think you met your wife or your relationship was really getting off the ground while you were steeped in CrossFit competition. And here you are basically, my words, not yours, this starving athlete and you're

similar to like a starving artist. Here you are and you're similar to like a starving artist. Here you are and you're meeting this woman and she wants to get married and start a life together. Were you ever like, oh shit, what am I going to do with my life? I can't do this much longer. Not exactly that story. I was pretty clear. Exactly that story. I was pretty clear.

I started my coaching and business career just before around the same time I started my competitive CrossFit career. So I was coaching athletes, personal training, group CrossFit coach, then became a CrossFit gym owner and was having success in growing from a business standpoint. A lot of opportunities coming my way at the, like simultaneous to my growth in CrossFit sport success, gaining remote clients, you know, having a CrossFit gym that I was, that was profitable and I was able to pay myself. Me and my partners were paying ourselves. I was doing personal training. So I was building some financial success while I was doing CrossFit. And the CrossFit to me, the sport, it was fun and it was giving me opportunities and I was learning and I was still on this very, very deep quest of like personal growth. It was, it was more about like, what, what am I capable of doing, um, in a, in sport when I finally found something that my talents, my hard work, my thoughtfulness really gave me a chance to be successful.

Cause I was a, I was a subpar collegiate athlete. I played soccer at UC Berkeley and I never saw a single minute of playing time. I always knew I was a good athlete growing up, but I just, it didn't express in the other sports that I was really, I played a lot when I was younger, soccer and golf. Like I never reached the, you know, a place where I was good enough to just,

you know, feel like I was expressing myself fully as an athlete. So then in CrossFit, I just was like, I need to ride this thing out as far as I can. Cause I need to feel what it's like to take a physical sport and express myself fully and then climb as high as I possibly can, because that's what I was, what, what, what was going to hold me back. It was really this, this, like this journey of self-discovery. Um, but back to what you were saying, like I was, I was earning money and I

was doing well as a bit as a coach and as a business owner. And it was when CrossFit and me climbing the ladder as an athlete started, it became clear. I was like, yeah, if I want to keep going up as an athlete, it's going to start getting in the way of me being a good like coach, like growing a career. I can't keep, they can't keep going up both together. Something's got to give. And I'm already 12th in the world. I'm 31 years old. I'm not, I don't think I'm going much higher. Like I might crack the top 10 maybe, but man, that's going to take a lot of work. And I think it's time for me to, and I, and I see this other part, my business and me being a coach, like, and yeah, with the family now kind of on the way, like now,

now my wife, now she's my wife, now she's pregnant. Okay. Wait a minute. Like, it's just, doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense to do this anymore. And so I walked away at a time where I definitely had more potential inside of me to go further in the sport. But it would have meant not experiencing the other part of my life that was was starting to become really important to fully. So I just couldn't I couldn't do both. I see it sort of the way you described it is is chapters in your life. And there's a there's 10 pages where they overlap. And you were smart enough to when you saw page one, you're like, OK, I can switch to the next chapter now. I don't have to write this out until the very last page of chapter one before I jump to chapter two.

And you made the switch. That's how I was sort of visualizing it. Brian got all excited because you said you played soccer. Look at him. I bet you the next question is a soccer question. Let's do it. I don't know, but I did play in college as well.

I played at a Division III school, so I did get to see the field. Yeah, well, it was hard i mean it was hard to be you know the star athlete in high school and then then go to just be like a sort of a discarded you know piece of trash on the college team like i was i was that guy i mean i i did not yeah it was it was not in hindsight i i really feel like that was a a pretty damaging period of time in my life to my like self-confidence it was just like whoa i'm i'm like i thought i was great i thought it was good and now i feel like I suck. What's the difference between college and the highest level of high school soccer? I'm assuming UC Berkeley is a Division I soccer school?

Yes, yes they are. What was the difference? What skills did you lack, or was it politics? What's the difference there? What didn't you have that got you on the field um i i would say i would say there's a certain amount of politics involved i mean i i didn't go to college to play soccer i went to college because i wanted to get into the best academic institution i could my first choice was stanford i didn't get accepted to stanford my second choice was ucla i did not get accepted to UCLA.

Berkeley wasn't even a third choice. It was just the best school I got into as an academic, you know, student. And then the next step was, OK, who do I know and can I contact the coaching the coaches at the school? and can I contact the coaching, the coaches at the school? And, you know, I had some, some connections having, you know, been from Marin County close to Berkeley coaches that I had played under as a high school athlete that went to Berkeley were, you know, former all Americans that vouched for me. So I kind of got like a look at walking onto the team that most people didn't get, but I was not a recruited athlete out of high school. And this is where the politics question comes in because you can, um, I think that there is something to that where, you know, coaches who work at a, you know, division one program and are putting together their team, you know, they go out

and they, they have a, they have a design to who they want to be in their starting lineup and they recruit these individuals. They might also specifically my, my position was goalkeeper. So there's a lot of philosophical stuff tied into how coaches, I think, look at what a goalkeeper's role should be. I mean, a goalkeeper could be, you know, a relatively short, very athletic, uh, player who can, has great foot skills and can sort of, and maybe that's what the coach prioritizes or the coach is like, Hey, I want a tall six foot three, you know, just monstrous athlete who can stand in the goal and win every single ball in the air that comes through the penalty box. It's it's different. And I don't I didn't fit the mold of what I think my coach really wanted as like a physical specimen.

You know, he wanted I mean, the guys that I played behind for three years were six foot, six foot two. Um, and, and they both went on to be all Americans and, and play in, in the MLS for, you know, with some decent careers. So I didn't play behind, you know, scrubs. Um, but I, but you know, I wasn't, I was not recruited as like that guy. So I saw it as a great opportunity to get into, you know, I was in school already and here I was going to have to, I was going to get to have a student athlete experience, which was all I knew in high school. And I knew that playing sports and being disciplined and having practice times and, you know, doing the thing always

supported me being a better student. And, and that was important to me. So I, it was, there were a lot of opportunities that came out of being a student athlete, getting priority registration, having access to certain, you know, student athlete services, uh, you know, that's, uh, I got to be plugged into some different social communities that i might otherwise not have i got access the the greatest blessing of the whole thing was that i got access to collegiate strength conditioning which if that that that had a huge impact on my future as a professional and as an athlete in crossfit so i mean we learned how to power snatch and power clean, squat, deadlift, front squat, overhead squat, you know, Nordic raise, bench press, the whole like plyometrics, jumping,

all in college. And I was doing this, I got into it and I was doing it next to the football players and the rugby players who were serious about their strength conditioning. My teammates could care less. It was like, they came in, check the box, get out. But I was like, I'm getting access to some really good coaching. And I left college being able to power snatch like, you know, close to, uh, 80 kilos. Right. And that was like, and I was 20 years old. So that was, and I didn't even know CrossFit wasn't around at that point so i had developed a pretty good uh base of fitness and strength and you know so yeah how was the coaching how was the coaching how was the coaching in the strength and the strength conditioning yeah i

look back and i was like we had you know i think the the problem was that the soccer team was sort of like lowest priority so i feel like they kind of gave like whatever the newest strength conditioning coach who just like was new on staff and they were like okay this is your like hazing like go and coach the soccer players we just kind of got the soccer players seriously yeah it was like they just it was because like i said 95 of my teammates could did not care about getting stronger they were like why are we even here and my coach was like my coach would be god bless him he was he tried but he was like philly don't you're getting too huge you're getting too big and i was like i was like like I I'm, I'm 185 pounds. What do you mean?

I'm getting too big. Like I, I need some muscle. Like I, I, you know, you're, you're, I'm playing behind, you know, six foot two, Josh Saunders over here. Who's a monster. Like, why, why would you tell me that? It's like, you're going to get, he had this thing in his mind. He was like, you know, you're going to get too muscle bound and you're going to lose

flex. He wanted us to do yoga and like, just, you know, I don't know. He was, he, he had a little bit backwards. He didn't quite understand the muscle physiology and, and, and physical fitness. I always, I always encourage people to do something in college because that discipline you talked about is so, so critical. I think that the team I played in was probably a, an extreme outlier in this case but in the last two years i was that i was there our average team gpa was a full grade point higher in season than out of season just because that discipline yeah yeah what did you

study marcus um the major uh was molecular and cell biology but it was pre pre-med i was pre-med did you like that subject um i i really did yeah i loved i mean you know within within the biology departments there were two biology degrees there there was molecular cell and then integrative biology and i chose the one that was more prestigious and more challenging because I wanted to look good on medical school applications. But once you're in the department, there's lots of different cool courses. And I took a ton of physiology. I took a ton of nutrition courses. And then, of course, the requisite cell biology courses. But, you know, chemistry, physics, math, and then biology was all very interesting to me. What do your parents do?

Dad was a physician and mom was a technician in the department that my dad worked in. So radiology was their, you know, uh, my dad was a radiologist and my mom was an ultrasonographer. So she was, you know, you go get an ultrasound. She was the one that was, uh, doing the technical ultrasound siblings. Yeah. Two, two siblings. One that's, um, a half brother who's, uh, also a radiologist and then a full-blood brother who's a little bit closer in age and he works in digital marketing. Does it trip your family out? Two-part question. Does it trip your family out?

Did it trip them out when you started doing the CrossFit thing? Like, oh, God, what's Marcus doing? He should be going to school and getting a job with health insurance. And is it also a trip to them that you blazed your own path, that you sort of, my words, not yours, followed your dream and just did kind of the put your head down and worked and followed your dream and became so successful? Do you ever reflect on that with your mom? Because it's got to be scary stuff for a mom, you know, because they want to see their son.

Your parents want to see you set up, right? They want to see you before they die. They want to see your nest built with some chicklets in it. And you were just like, you were playing professional athlete. Yeah. Well, the story goes that like, you know, I was this pre-med student at Berkeley, graduated with really high honors, really good grades,

went to medical school for a year and then dropped out. And, um, yeah, I mean, my, my dad was, they were both worried about me because I didn't, you know, I wasn't one to just like quit stuff. You know, I mean, I was desperate. It was, it was a dire situation where I was extremely depressed in medical school. And that just stemmed from pursuing something that was not, not, uh, I was not truly passionate about. And I didn't, I didn't see was, uh, connected to like my purpose, you know, and I was, I felt lost. I went to Ohio State University

for medical school and, you know, to go from being a California kid growing up in Marin, being on the West Coast to then, you know, dropping myself right in the middle of Central Ohio. And this was, yeah, I mean, I was 23. This is almost 14 years ago. Um, CrossFit was, you know, Columbus was not the hub of, of health and fitness, maybe like with rogue fitness being there. I mean, it was just different. And I just felt like I was so far from where I was supposed to be. There was nothing healthy. There was nothing. There's no good, wholesome living going on. It was the Midwest. It was, and medical school is hard, regardless of whether you're doing well or you get it

or not. I mean, I was struggling. So I wanted to be in health and fitness. I wanted to be in it before I went to medical school, but there was no path that was, had been carved out by anybody really. I mean, it was, you become a personal trainer or, you know, it's like, that was it. That's all I knew. And so the micro gyms, you know, CrossFit getting into the community, you know, whatever, whatever we do today, you know, like it just wasn't around. So I was like, okay, I got to stick to something I'm good at. And, uh, which is science and math.

And I'm already on this long journey to becoming a doctor. I've invested all this time. I got parents, I got family in there. They, that's how they did it. You know, that's how they created this life for themselves. I guess I'll just keep going. And so when I left and when I dropped out, my parents, first and foremost, were like, man, we got to get our kid healthy and happy again. Cause bad, you know, he's depressed. And, um, and then, so it was like, I'm going to take some time off. It wasn't like I'm quitting, but took some time off. And, and my mom was super supportive of me just getting healthy. And she's like, we'll figure out the rest later. And then I think, you know, after a few months, my dad is like, okay, well, what are you going to do now? What

are you going to do now? And he just wanted to see me like engaged in something. Cause I, I think they were both very confident. Like, Hey, if he finds something that he's really into, he's going to make it work. There was no question. No question in their mind. I had plenty of questions. I'm like, how the hell am I going to make this work as something else? So I was so driven to just over deliver on everything I did as a fitness coach.

I worked at Pete's Coffee. That Pete's Coffee you talked about in Mill Valley. coach. I worked at Pete's coffee, that Pete's coffee you talked about in Mill Valley. I worked there for three years just so I could coach CrossFit and get into this whole fitness world, um, and make a little money on the side and just not be at home where I would, where I was going to be feeling judged by somebody, you know, looking at me like, what are you doing with your life? I lived at my, with my parents for three or four years after I dropped out of medical school. And, um, it was just, I was just so committed to like, I'm going to be the best coach at this gym. Uh, everybody that, cause I, and once I felt like I was making a difference in people's health and fitness and their lives, it was like, you could not tell me that this wasn't

going to work. I was like, this is so going to work. Because I went to medical school and you guys all love me. And you thought I was going to be the greatest doctor of all time. And you were like, so supportive. I'm not talking about my parents. I'm talking about everybody. Marcus, you're going to be great. Look at you in medical school.

And I wasn't helping a single person. I was, it was, I was feeling like I was hurting people by being there. Now I found something. I was like, I can, I'm making a difference in people's lives. People are telling me they're getting out of pain. People are telling me that they're losing weight. People are telling me that they're happier. People are just stoked to be around me and take my classes. Like, yep. I don't care what this is going to work. I figured we'll figure it out. I don't care what this is going to work. I figure we'll figure it out. And, and that was just so charging and so energizing to me. Once I caught onto that, the next three or four years was just like, that was what I poured my life into. And, and remember, this is like CrossFit as a sport

just had sort of happened on the side, right? That's why I did team competition for a couple of years. Cause I was, I was a hundred percent of coach. And then I just did the team thing with my happened on the side right that's why i did team competition for a couple years because i was i was a hundred percent a coach and then i just did the team thing with my friends and by the third year of making it to the games and doing well as a team i was like oh i should probably do this thing more seriously you know this is fun and i'm good at it and i maybe i could be maybe i could be one of those you know individual guys out there who are really good because they're really good. What's depression look like? When you're 20 years old and you're in school, what's depression look like?

How do you know you're depressed? I just wake up every day with the joy kind of gone just it was most of my days were filled with worry and anxiety not really looking forward to anything just feeling like I have to get through each day and it's hard to get through each day. You know, my depression, I think,

was brought on a lot by an anxious mind and a worried mind around, you know, the performance that I was putting out in the world. So specifically as a student, I just put a tremendous amount of pressure on myself to do really, really well with grades. And once I had set a very high bar in college, it was like, I couldn't, I couldn't accept anything less. And so everything in my life became about how do I study more to get the best grades and, you know, not leave anything to question. And that just became very worrisome and anxiety provoking and, um, yeah. And, and then not feeling like I was surrounded by people who just really like understood me. So it kind of just became isolated. I was very isolated in

medical school. Um, my final year of college, I also experienced a lot of this too. And, uh, because I was at Berkeley, I was so close to home. I just came home every week, every weekend I'd have classes for three or four days. And then I'd be home for three or four days of like, I just want to be around my parents. I don't, I don't feel like I'm, I'm supported by people out there, you know? So that was, that was a, it was a, it was a three to four year stretch, you know, on and off of kind of going in and out of that. And when I, when I got away from medical school and I, I got connected to the CrossFit community, truly like that just was gone. You know, I mean, I've, I've dealt with some anxiety since then,

especially since becoming a parent and a business owner and, you know, having some real, real life stresses. But, um, you know, I, I said goodbye to that phase of, of deep, dark depression where I was so disconnected to purpose when I got aligned with the health and fitness community and CrossFit. If you ever want to visit that again, that's what you described what it's like when, uh, the first week you you quit coffee so if you ever if you ever want to uh i literally the the first week i i i quit coffee i was like okay why am i waking up now because i used to wake up and be so excited to see my coffee machine and for the first week i was like okay what what what am i what's the plan here but this i feel like when i have to like wake up and do fasting blood work and I can't have coffee or eat until whatever time, I'm like, what the hell is the point of getting up?

Yeah, why get up? The pressure that you talk about, though, either you put on yourself or sometimes put on students or just people in the professional's a really that's a really serious thing and and it's i think it's a bit unfair you know for for people to sometimes have to live up to that i kind of stumbled into i think a similar situation in college um where i had just gone through two years and i happened to have straight a's in every class and so then i was like oh my god straight a's in every class. And so then I was like, oh, my God, I have straight A's in every class. And I wasn't even thinking about it. But the next year I felt like, well, I better get A's all again this year. It would be pretty pathetic to go backwards from this. And the way that I got sick that year in school, and I had one teacher.

We had four grades for the class. It was a midterm, a final, a paper, and our participation grade. And I got sick to the point where I couldn't go to school for a month. And I got an A on the midterm and an A on the final. And I turned in my paper like three months before the end of the semester and got an A on that. I did that since I was home sick and had nothing else to do. I figured, oh, I'll give them one less thing to grade at the end of the year. And I get my final grade, and I had a B in the class.

It gave me a zero for participation because I missed an entire month of classes. And I thought this was the most unfair thing in my life. Of course, you know, 21 year old kid, I'm like out to prove the world wrong. I submitted all these medical documents and everything. And ultimately the school was like, it's a teacher's class. It's his call. He'll give you whatever grade he wants. But it ended up being one of the most freeing things for me because for the next year and a half, then I was going to classes, which, and I was taking classes like you that I was interested in. And I wanted to ask questions and I wanted to challenge the teachers. But before I was starting to focus so much on the grades that I stopped losing sight of actually challenging my mind and asking those questions. After getting a B, the 4.0 was no longer a stress for me,

and I got several more Bs just because I challenged the teachers. And I grew through that, and I hope they did too. I don't know if I ever got an A in college. I wish I had had a lesson like that at some point. I got straight As in high school, and then I got straight A's in college, and I didn't really give myself any leeway in any direction. And, of course, the science and math classes, I don't want to say they came easy, but they were not as challenging,

you know, for me, if I put the time in, it was, it was like the basic literature requirement to graduate from Berkeley. Like you had to take like the one class, like it was the hardest class I took. I took an American studies class my first semester there on the recommendation of like my you know academic advisor because it was supposed to be easy it was like the hardest class i took you know in all four years and i just was shrugged i was like how am i going to get this a it was brutal marcus how did you meet your wife? My wife, Megan, is a doctor of psychology. And I was coaching CrossFit. And I was just, you know, new clients coming in.

new clients coming in. We're getting three protocol sessions or more like intro sessions. I remember the owner of the gym said, Marcus, you're going to be working with this woman named Dr. Caden who's coming in. I was like, okay. I felt pretty confident in my ability to teach and get people ready for group CrossFit I was like, okay, you know, um, I was, I felt pretty confident in my, you know, ability to teach, you know, and get people ready for group CrossFit class. But I was, I was this dropout of medical school and I'm like, oh shit, here comes this doctor.

Fuck. Okay. I gotta like, I gotta have my shit, you know, I gotta get my, my A game, you know, I'm gonna, I had a doctor's going to come in and it's going to like think think they know something about health and fitness and I got to like show them my stuff. So I like was all prepped. I didn't know what kind of doctor this person was, but of course I just assumed like, you know, their, their medical, you know, medical doctor. Anyway, she walked in and, you know, cute girl. I was excited to like coach her and she was super enthusiastic and, um, she just lots of smiles and we just chatted. And I think I just was like, I just over-delivered. Like I was

not like, I'm like, she's cute, but I'm like, I got to teach her so good. I'm going to be the best coach she's ever seen. She's going to think that, you know, whatever. I felt like I had to prove something. And, um, yeah, so we, uh, we just had these three sessions and then she went off and, um, started taking group classes and she didn't come to my classes. She was going to somebody else's cause like we had the gym I was working for had a couple locations. And so I just didn't work out that we were like coaching and taking the same time. Um, and then like six months later, she happened to start coming to one of my classes or, or I got assigned to the class that

she was coaching and we just became friends. You know, she was in a relationship, um, at the time. And so, um, she was dating women at the time. So I was like, you know, I really was like, oh, this is just a cool person that I have no pressure. Like there's no interest. She's not, she couldn't be interested in me. So we just developed like a pre, you know, I felt like an honest relationship, friendship. She admired me as a coach and she was a cool, you know, cool girl in class. And, and then about like a year after the whole, after we met, um, I started to like, I was like, wait a minute. I don't think she's, I think she might be interested in me. Like there's, I was picking up some signals.

Like I was very, very focused as a coach. Like I really wasn't at a place in my life where I was looking for partners and I wasn't really, you know, I didn't have any like radar up for somebody might be, um, you know, flirting with me or something like that. And, but I, I think she was like really laying it on very, very thick to like get through to me like, Hey man, I'm, I'm actually, you know, I'd like to take this past the friend zone. And so I finally kind of like snapped out. It was like, oh, I think this is actually happening. She might be interested. And, um, so yeah, it was,

it was quite a fun first year of just like getting to know this person as like a, a friend, like just as a friend and like feeling zero pressure as an, as an, as a man to be like, oh, I have to like show some good stuff around this girl. Cause she's like, you know, she's hot or something like that. I didn't never thought about it once until it was so like in my face, like, dude, wake up. She is totally into you. Like you guys, you need to like go on a date with her or something like that. Did someone tell you, or you actually caught it? I think somebody had to like, I, I caught just enough where i like had to run it by my like co-worker i was like tony what is going on here like is this girl megan into me like i thought she was dating so it's like i'm like this is so weird she's like i think it's you know

she's like playing kind of behind the scenes like chatting with her like yeah i think he i think you need to go on a date with her it was pretty funny so so she went the right direction you you she she was dating girls and then came to you you don't want her to come to you and then start dating girls so it's kind of good you got her when she got that like she you know she found what she wanted i think it's the right it's the right order that's right i mean well and you know i think there's you could see it that way i think it's the right order. That's right. I mean, well, and, you know, I think there's – you could see it that way. I think it's – I think there's – I've seen it go both ways. It's always the right order.

When you find love, that's the right order. Good point. Good point. So the part that interests me about that is I like to think of myself as a relationship expert. I just think of myself as an expert on everything. And then all of a sudden I look at the fact that you're married to a real relationship expert, not one like me, a pretending one. And that immediately, like when I look at her Instagram account, I have to look away. I get scared.

I get scared for you. I'm like, holy shit. Can you imagine being in a relationship with a relationship expert? It's like, what is that like? I mean, is it like sometimes you're like, yo, everything's fine here. Stop looking at our relationship like it's a, like through a microscope or like or like we're part of the test tube like you know this one you have to set free from your diagnostic tools i mean what what is that like i mean i truly i truly felt a little bit of like oh god how does he do that

yeah like almost like i'm scared to meet her you know she um i never feel like i'm we're we're under some microscope but what is um what she never pulls out the dsm manual and is like okay marcus i found all your problems well we've been in like we've been in in couples therapy since 2014 since we were just really starting to get going in our relationship and we were, we were in a great place. We didn't have kids when we were like, not in a problem space. We were just like, that's what she believed was a valuable thing for us to pursue. And I was, I had been in plenty of therapy in my life. I was like, okay, I'm open to it. So what it really has done is, um, over the, you know, when you when people talk about like, hey, relationships require work, you need to put work into a relationship for it to be healthy. All right. Well, I you look at I am to use health fitness is like this now.

It's like some a lot of people will say, hey, you need to like, you need to move your body and eat right. Okay. Well, does that mean like go for a walk and, you know, have a salad once a week? Or does that mean like, you know, do CrossFit 10, you know, 10, 10 sessions a week and eat a perfect paleo diet? Like these are just there. You're both putting in work on your body and your health and your wellness. It's just different levels and different extremes or different, like amount of focus on it. And I'm not going to argue that like, hey, going for walks and eating a salad a week is bad. That's good. It's better than nothing. And, you know, working on your relationship, you know, like having one honest conversation a month, like, well, that's better than zero. And then I see like how, how we have approached working on our relationship and because her commitment to, and her, and like, I prioritize health and fitness of the physical body. And

I've done that my whole life to such a high level. Well, she has prioritized relationship as the center of all like life's purpose. And so that was not something that I grew up with. And that was my highest value and highest priority when I was before meeting her. And maybe even to this day, but I'm a partner to somebody who believes in that both professionally, personally, philosophically. It's just inside of her. And you can see it, how she approaches everything. It's like, I'm talking to you. I'm going to slow down this relationship.

And the moment, like these moments that I have with you is all that matters right now because everything else is just secondary. Because everything else is just secondary. And so that is how I have basically been like learning to be in relationship for a number of years. And because it wasn't my highest value coming into the relationship, it's been at times challenging. It's like, whoa, like we're really focused on this. Like we're putting a lot of time and energy into this thing. And I would imagine it's like, you know, somebody who comes into a relationship, who's not that into, like, if I started dating somebody that wasn't into like health and fitness, they'd be like, dude, like we're like talking about movement and like

eating well, like, why are we doing this? Like, they're going to see some value from it. And I'm sure they're going to be like, this is great. And then at some point they're going to be like, can we just shut the fuck up about exercise? Like, we don't need to talk about it right now. You know? And that can be me sometimes I'm like, Whoa, like, this is great. We're our relationship is strong. We're learning a lot of things. We have our challenges. I'm glad we're doing this. And then sometimes I'm like, can we just not talk about it? Can we not like, can we just not work on it for a week? Like, I just want to veg out and look at, you know, Netflix, like, can we just not talk, you know? So, um, it's, it's by and large, a huge plus, like, and it's more than just in our relationship it's like man i have

connected with somebody who has taught me the value of putting relationship first like i i bring that to other parts of my life now not just her sure i bring that to my kids like i'm getting emotional thinking about because i'm like if I hadn't met her and we didn't have this relationship, I don't know that I would ever have found the value in that. And, um, man, for somebody who didn't have that as, as a number one or even a number two growing up, it's, it's pretty special. So yeah, I'm super lucky. I don't feel like we're, you know, at times I'm like, let's take it easy. But for the most part, I'm like, man, I'm super lucky. I don't feel like we're, you know, at times I'm like, let's take it easy. But for the most part, I'm like, man, I lucked out for sure. As you were saying that, I was remembering her being at regionals and being super, you know, there for you.

Every time I saw you there at the games or wherever, she was there supporting you. And it's kind of interesting because she was your support team and now you're her support team. But also it's like, yeah, you're kind of the ultimate project for her, right? Because she has her own relationship, but then she's also helping people with other relationships. So probably in the same way that you held yourself to a certain standard, she wants to make sure she practices what she preaches, right? And now you've signed up to go along for the ride, which is, and you're absolutely

right. What you were saying was what I was thinking the whole time. No matter how much work you put in, it's really not, your relationship with her is just 1% of the benefit you're getting. The other 99% is all the people you deal with all over the world. Yeah. But man, there, there is nothing.

I mean, so you kind of have two sports that are kind of the two hardest sports in the world. You're working on yourself. You're working, both your sports involve working on yourself. Yeah. You're a whole and and that's right okay i i'm not gonna work on myself for a week you know what i i'm gonna put some peanut i'm gonna put an extra peanut butter on this celery and you know what i'm gonna look at the playboy

magazine you know like yeah oh i've had the i've yeah and i've and i think that's been a growth for me in the last year is like I, of course, I mean, going back to like the school thing, like wanting to get good grades and wanting to like do the best and be the best and have the best like resume, so to speak, you know, in my own personal life. speak, you know, in, in my own personal life and just as I am as a person, like I want to, I want to do the right thing. Like, Oh, do the therapy, like do the work on yourself. Like, okay, that's what people want. That's what people around me value. Like I'm going to do that. Cause I want to show up for them. And, um, it's, it's led to me doing a lot of work and at times just doing the work because other people want it from me. And I've had to learn this last year, like, okay, it's all right to just not want to do it for a week, you know, or it's okay to just be like, Hey, don't ask me about the thing. Let's not, please don't talk to me about how that conversation I just had with Noah went. Cause I just don't want to talk about being a parent for a minute. I want to just,

I don't want to be, I'm not perfect. And I just want to take a break off it, you know? So it, it has been interesting to come into some of that awareness this year. It's like, yeah, I've been working on myself in so many ways. And, you know, sometimes you just want to take a break. I just, they're not going to work on myself this week. Okay. Right. when you said that a baby cried in the background i felt like you have a sound i felt like you have a sound effect button you're like i'll one up these guys and you hit a button and we heard a baby cry go ahead there's breakfast happening yeah same here i same here i got a breakfast right here next to me

too see i'm i'm single i rely on myself for meal. This is a unique position to be in, but it's a good position to be in. Oh, we're reliant on ourselves for meals. It's not us who's getting fed breakfast, Brian. Don't get that twisted. I know you'll go in there and get the scraps off of Avi's plate. I will. I will. I sure will eat the scraps.

Actually, he probably doesn't leave any scraps. He eats everything, doesn't he? Marcus. Were you going to – go ahead. Sorry, Brian. Yeah. I'm pretty curious about the development of your business and specifically with the way that similar businesses have started to adopt certain principles in the last couple of years that I think you've been doing for nearly twice as long. But specifically, I mean, with the media stuff, I feel like you somehow figured out like five years ago that having really high quality media production and putting out this stuff consistently over time was important.

And I think a lot of other people in the space have started doing that now. I could be totally mistaken there, but I mean, if you go to your website or if you watch your inscript going back for several years, it's very consistent. It's very appealing in a lot of different ways. And I was curious how you,

you know, if you found a media team to work with, if that idea was like just inside of you, that this is going to be important thing for me. And if you wanted to maybe share where that, some of that inspiration came from. Marcus, hold on one second before you answer that. Cause that's a great question. I just want to say one thing. Marcus has 755,000 followers on Instagram. He did not get these in the traditional way that a lot of CrossFit athletes got. I don't think that, I think as a CrossFit athlete, he may be crested to a hundred thousand, maybe at the highest. I want to say in 2019, he had 150,000

followers. And, um, so this is, people are coming to him from way, uh, what I would say probably is outside the community. He is a genuine, um, health and fitness and nutrition hub. It's not – there is no – I honestly would – from going through the whole thing, I would say there's no – it's for literally everyone. And he's pulled these people together because of what you can already hear from the first hour of this podcast. He's very authentic. He's extremely passionate, and he's leaving no stone unturned. And I, it's interesting cause he doesn't, the marketing is so it's, it's almost hard to figure out how he's making a living. I mean, he had, he's, I don't know if he coined the term functional bodybuilding. He has something called revival

strength, but you'd go there and he's not shoving stuff down your throat. It's not like, bye, bye, bye. There's none of that. I don't see any really of the supplement stuff, but, um, he's given away tons of free content showing, um, beautifully shot yet very simple, um, movements and, and there it's a constant drum beat. So maybe, um, before you answer his question, tell us a little bit, um, Marcus about what's going on, what you're doing there. Like what's your business? What are you sharing with the world? And then I'm very curious about Brian's question also.

Yeah. I'd love to unpack it all. Yeah. So the history was that I owned a CrossFit gym for a number of years. owned a CrossFit gym for a number of years. And then in 2016, right around regionals, when we had our, you know, that behind the scenes film that you made was featured me quite a bit.

I sold my gym like about a month before that. And it was a little bit of a bittersweet ending. I just had, I parted ways with business partners that I no longer shared the vision of the future with. Um, it was at that time that I dedicated my, the rest of that year to getting, you know, really fit and doing as well as I could in the CrossFit games. Um, and then the following year I started my own business, which was called revival strength or is called revival strength. And it's a coaching business, fitness coaching business that had multiple arms to it.

It had online personal coaching. And then it ultimately, we opened up a small training facility in San Rafael for local clients. So it was not a CrossFit facility, but we did a lot of the same stuff. And we were just offering it in a one to one personal coaching format. So that was when Revival Strength got started. And it was also simultaneously when I left the sport and I started training, you know, a little bit differently. My, what I was showcasing on social media for my own personal training, uh, what I was doing to keep fit was, it was like this, I was still doing CrossFit movements and CrossFit sport type things, but I was also trying to heal my body after

seven years of competing. So I was a little, I was So I was quite injured and just now had a baby and had different life demands. So I was bringing together some other training disciplines to create what felt like a bit more of a sustainable, balanced approach for fitness, not the competitive grind I was in. And that incorporated some bodybuilding principles. And those Instagram posts in late 2016, early 2017, um, got a tremendous amount of engagement more so than what I was getting from posting, you know, snatch muscle up handstand walk videos. People were very interested in, hey, Marcus, what is this thing you're doing?

Hey, how do I do this training? What's this training? And I was just in an exploratory phase. And I one day just – I didn't coin the term because somebody had used it in the past. But I did a training session where I had done some CrossFit. I had also done quite a bit of bodybuilding in the same workout. And I was like, oh, this feels like I got a good pump and I did some CrossFit. I'm going to call it – this feels like functional bodybuilding.

And I just posted that very – with a hashtag, functional bodybuilding. And it just caught on. People were like, whoa, that's super cool. Like how do I do functional bodybuilding? And I was like, well, you could, you know, try some of these things and hire me as your coach or hire one of my coaches as your coach. I had one coach working for me. Um, and, uh, and they were like, well, I can't afford to get your coaching, but I want to still do your program. How do I do your program? And so this started the process.

Wait, wait, wait. What a great line. Can you imagine going into Whole Foods and saying that? I really need those avocados, but I can't afford them. Yeah, I know. I really want that ribeye, but yeah, I can't afford that. So can I have your you know flat meat um that's basically what i was getting so that that started you know long story short i developed an

online training program to showcase some of these training principles and i put it out as a 12-week kind of experiment like here here you go everybody you You can purchase a 12 week program from me. I called it a wake and training series. And that was the first functional bodybuilding program I put out. And that was in 2017, April of 2017. Just as a note, my employer at the time bought it when it came out and he, and he saw it through, I think the, at least the first four iterations that you put out. Yeah. Yeah. So we did four iterations. Yeah. So that was April, 2017. And, uh, and, and that just like pretty quickly within three to six months, I was like, Whoa, this is another like business opportunity and a way to reach people that, you know, aren't going to hire me for personal coaching. I mean, it was like, you know, do I want to pay $300 plus a month or do I want to buy this thing for, you know, a fraction of the cost and just try and figure it out on my own. Right. And, um,

so fast forward to today, you know, we're, we're still that, you know, we're still revival strength. We still do personal coaching, but we're also functional bodybuilding as a brand who, and we're selling functional bodybuilding online community. We have a training, we have a, you know, a training program, a subscription program that you can sign up for. And, um, I put a lot of energy and heart into that. Now back to what you were saying, Brian, you know, where did it all start? Well, it really all started in 2011. I hired my first coach to coach me as a crossfit athlete opt was my first coach so james fitzgerald became my coach yeah and i that's some good that's some good just a little the guy who i said was my employer in 2017 who bought your program was also being coached by james fitzgerald in the around 2010, 2011 time period.

Oh, right on. Who was that by the way? His name's Anthony DeSaro or DeSaro from Naples, Florida. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I know him. He became a personal client of ours at some point in revival strength later on, but yeah, James was like a huge inspiration and, and kind of mentor figure to me early on. But the way that that is important is that, you know, in 2011, when James was coaching clients, the way that he reviewed our training results was through online blogs. We all had to have our own blog and we had to post our training results to a blog so that he could just big dogs blog uh he had a big dogs but he had a blog where he gave out free training content but no this was

marcus philly.org or marcus philly.com that was marcus's training journey and it was every single day from 2011 to 2013 that i trained i posted posted my workout, what my results were and videos that went with it so that James or whoever wanted to coach me could go and click there and say, oh, this is what he's doing. This was before companies like True Coach existed and we had platforms to deliver results to our coaches on the web. I had to do all this work. So I was a content creator and, you know, before social media like was really big, I was just putting it on there. And eventually I started linking it to my Facebook, but that was way after the fact I was doing it because I needed my coach to see it.

And then the small community of people that were, you know, big dogs or other OPT athletes at the time all had my website and they could go look at what I was doing. Well, that actually turned into a couple business, like a couple clients. People saw that and they emailed me. I put a little link to my email. I got a couple clients out of that. saw that and they emailed me, I put a little link to my email. I got a couple of clients out of that. And to me, it was like this act of showing my process. How do I become, how am I getting to where I'm at? James called it, take off the kimono, be vulnerable, be naked, just show it to the world, right? So that when you show up on competition day, there's nothing to hide. It's like, everyone knows what you did. Hey, this is the guy. And that was extremely freeing to me. It was like,

if I'm just totally authentic and vulnerable and I put it all out there and I show everything, the fails, the wins, the PRs, the shitty days, then I'm, I'm living this and I'm learning and I'm going to grow. And so I did that for years. And then Instagram came around and I was like, well, hell, this is a heck of a lot easier than posting this blog. This blog takes work. I was writing. And if people want to, if they can find it on the internet,

there's some deep stuff in there. It was like a diary that I wrote. And I wrote paragraphs every day about what was going on internally to go from being a good team athlete to cracking into the individual competition scene of the CrossFit Games. It was powerful. And so when I started showing that on Instagram and that became the driving force was like, I'm always going to be the person who's going to show it all. I'm just going to give a lot as much as I can. And if I do that, I know it's going to come back in the way of business opportunities, in the way of, uh, clients and customers. Um,

and so that was a foundation for me forever. And then in 2016, 2017, I met a very important person who is now my business partner. She came to me and we had a similar view of what it meant to grow an audience. And that was providing really high, high quality content for free. And she helped me to start an email list when she was like, you need that email list. And I didn't realize it was an important thing. And starting in 2017, we started writing weekly editorials and I haven't missed one since. And that has always been about teaching people, showing them how to do it better for themselves, giving actionable tips every single week. Um, and, and this, this philosophy has just carried us, you know, so far. And I

became, it became clear that when it looked good on, on social media, people clicked on it more. And so I was like, well, great, we got to get this information out there. May as well make it look the best that we possibly can. And so, you know, started exploring working with people that could take good photographs, who could take good videos, and who could make the work of creating content on a consistent basis, which, you know, now is anywhere from three to five pieces of content a day, you know, that have sharp images and, you know, good, good video and good quality, good audio. Like it's, you know, it, it meant having more people involved, um, cause it was a lot to do on my own while also coaching people and trying to run a business.

So it's just grown organically out of this thing, which was a blog in 2011 into today, which is, you know, a couple of different social media platforms that are putting out stuff and an email list. And now a YouTube channel that puts out a weekly video that's in, you know, long form educational content video. So it's, yeah, it's just something that's grown slowly, but surely has been thoughtful at every step of the way. Man, I really appreciate that, that, uh, you know, sharing that journey, because I think people can see the finished product, but they don't know the years of foundation that sometimes goes into it. I mean, I've always been curious of how, like I said, how you arrived at such a professional

looking platform kind of early on in the game. So I appreciate that Marcus. Are you and your wife, like, is there a strict schedule every day? Like, do you know, like, it's not common that someone on the West Coast will take a 7 a.m. podcast. Oh, yeah. I was wondering, I was like, man, you get going early, but I guess that's for people in other time zones, huh? Well, also, like, 7 a.mm is the only time shit's quiet around here i agree yeah like like there's already noise all around me i usually like i try to keep them up

late like i know the podcast is going to happen so last night i tried to keep them up a little late so they're like sleeping a little more nah it didn't work but um but how crazy is your day? How crazy is your schedule? It's less crazy now than it was a year ago. A year ago at this time, it was full-on madness. I mean, our kids are fortunately back in full-time school and daycare. They're two and four years old, so daycare, preschool. But at this time last year, we didn't have that access. So we were doing everything from, you know, ourselves here, and just taking in trading off. So we sort of developed some of our daily schedule that still, you know, exists today from from a year ago. So this is like her morning

to get them up, get them fed, get them going for their day. And I, I have until, you know, I have all morning to work. So I was up at five this morning, I did my morning routine and then I'm, you know, answering some emails, getting on a podcast, maybe taking a meeting. Um, so it's, it's pretty, it's a pretty structured, you know, schedule for our family and it works really well. And that's cause we're both working full time. Um, or, you know, we both have our own businesses that we're running and, um, we have great support for our kids. Like, like I said, they have, you know, school and daycare and my mom is local. So she takes, you know, she helps out with them, but

we're also very involved. Yeah. That's very nice. But I'm picking them up from school three days a week at 3 p.m. and dropping them off a couple days a week at 9 a.m. So that kind of puts some constraints on work time. So I have to just be pretty focused on when I get things done. Do your kids have to wear masks at the preschool, your two-year-old and four-year-old?

They don't, no. Even the preschool, because it's technically licensed as like a daycare center, they get to create some of their own rules. Awesome. Congratulations. I have very strong opinions about two-year-olds and four-year-olds covering their face on every level. So you already took a cold plunge this morning?

I took a sauna and a cold plunge this morning. Damn, you are a pampered man. You are a pampered man. Isn't it funny? I'm calling you pampered man even though cold plunge is just, I don't know how much that is of pampering. I've watched some of those videos because I would really like to pull the trigger on a sauna. I don't know what I'm waiting for. That one you have is amazing.

How much is something like that, that barrel you have? Yeah, I think you can get it for – you know, it's tricky because I think you can probably get it delivered like $2,200, $2,400. You can probably get the whole thing. But then you got to do the electrical on it, which is pretty – you have to get it hardwired. Then you got to do the electrical on it, which is pretty – you have to get it hardwired. And that ran me like $1,000 to get an electrician to come out and do that. So that was like an unknown expense that was going to come from it. It's $220?

It's $220, like a washer and dryer or something? Okay. So they run the cable. And then do you build it or does it come like that, like an igloo on its side? You build it, yeah. But the two circles, the front and the back, come pre-made and then there's a bunch of slats. And it shows you how to build it. I had a handyman come and build it for me. That's what I would do.

Yeah. He's done a bunch of them and he did it in like four hours. So it wasn't that much to have him put it together. But yeah, I'm not handy at all. I don't know how to build anything. I don't look like a man, and I'm not a man. Marcus Philly, on the other hand, is false advertising. He looks like a man but is not a man.

I could lift some things for you, but I certainly can't build it. Yes, Yvonne, you got to get one. It's, it's absolutely been, it's one of those like health and wellness tools that if you incorporate it into your life daily, you'll be like, Whoa, how did I ever live? Like now I do it every single day over for over almost two years I've done it. And we were like, I'm like, I don't, I don't like to go anywhere. I don't like to travel. Cause I travel because I want to have my sauna. Like we're thinking about doing a little kitchen remodel and we might have to move out for a couple months. I'm like, fuck, how am I – where am I going to put – where am I going to find a place to live for a little while with a sauna? Like that's – it's just so – it's so important to the daily ritual now. So it's plugged in, it's electric, and then do you turn it on or does it heat up rocks

and then you throw water on the rocks? Tell me a little bit more. You don't need to use water. The rocks get super hot. Since it's a small two-seater and I bought the superpower heater in it you know they give you like you get like the second tier heater that's more powerful it heats up in probably 10 to 15 minutes so i i literally come i wake up turn the hot water on go out there click the thing into turn it to on, come in, brew my coffee, take a few sips, go out there and it's ready to

go. And so you could do dry sauna or wet sauna. You could have steam pouring off of it or. Yeah. Yeah. I, it's just dry. I mean, it gets so, uh, humid in there. Um, I mean, you're sweating like crazy without any steam. So I, I don't find it to be necessary. Although I do have a little water pail in there that I can drop some water on it every once in a while if I want. Um, and then, yeah, you can do a few things. Like I put a rain cover on the top of it, uh, which was important to just keep wet out, but then that also insulates it and traps more heat in. So it makes it hotter. Um, and then, you know, it does jack up your energy usage a bit, but then we got solar panels. So I'm like,

I'm just heating myself with the sun, the power of the sun, which we're all feeling good about. And how long do you stay in there? Yeah. I've cause people ask me that all the time. It ranges anywhere from like 30 to 50 minutes. Um, you know, I'll go in there? Yeah. I've cause people ask me that all the time. It ranges anywhere from like 30 to 50 minutes. Um, you know, I'll go in there and I, I actually, my phone, my phone can overheat if I like hold it up too high, but I usually answer a lot of, um, direct messages and their DMS in there. And I get a lot of those. So it's, it's a pretty effective use of time. I just, I connect with a lot of people and um yeah so i i'm in there from 30 to 50 minutes depending on how many dms we got

you have two girls yeah two are you gonna have any more kids no no i took care of that um i we decided it wasn't wasn't gonna be for us i i like i love the idea of maybe having more kids but um it's a it's a lot in in marin to think about having more kids it's a lot um my wife's 42 now uh so you know we we wanted to have our first before she was 40 which we did and um i don't know. I just think we're happy with where we're at. Yeah. Plenty of work to do right now.

Is it stressful having kids in this world? When you look at the future, are you like, holy shit, there's a lot of chaos going on? Man, I'll be honest. Periodically, I'll think about the future for them and the future, what that might look like raising them. But I feel like there's so much to do today. It's so challenging. in it's just it's it's not challenging it's like it's just what we got our hands full just giving them a great

life experience right now and um i mean yeah things are gonna look really different in a few years in 10 years when you know we're facing new stages of parenting. But I don't know. I mean, I have a hard enough time, like not worrying about the future and like what could go wrong. And that it's like, if I add thinking about what's going to look like for them too, it's just, I'm not going to be an effective parent today. And so that's, that's my work is, is how do I make these moments with them right now, really special and not get too caught up in work and business and

social media and all the other stuff that could be distracting me from just being like, I'm with these kids right now. My wife was just out of town for five days. She went to see her parents for the first time in over a year and which was wonderful for her. And it was wonderful for me. I was like, dude, I am the only, I am the sole responsible person right now for, for almost six days in a row. Like, so you stayed with the two, you stayed with your daughters that whole time. Yeah. Yeah. My mom helped pick up, but I was just, it was, you know, five, six nights in a row. It was just me and the kids and, you know, every little peep that's coming from the room, like I'm on red alert. Like this is my, I'm nothing for me to feel ownership more so than I normally do when I'm in this, you know, dual parenting role with her. And, um, but yeah, all that's just to say,

like, it gave me just a more of an appreciation for, um, how, how important it is to, to just do good, a good job today with them and, and give them as much of myself as I can not get too caught up in what's going to happen in the future. Yeah. I try to use the chaos in the world to motivate me to just make them more capable. And I don't really let it stress me out at all either. Um, but it just makes me realize the importance of, like you said, not only being there with them and spending a ton of time with them, but just making sure that, okay, hey, this is, no one knows what the world is going to look like in 10 years because we're moving so fast. I mean, you know, the job, I don't know, 50% of the jobs that exist today

weren't around when we were kids because the world's changing so quickly. But yeah, I like that. Some people will ask me sometimes, are you stressed out? And I'm like, no. But even though I immerse myself in sort of the chaos and I like to look at it, for some reason it doesn't stress me out. Well, and coming back kind of to something we talked about earlier about my wife and her sort of specialty as a professional, I think that is the thing that we are working on arming our

kids with is like how to have good relationship skills and relational skills with other people. And to, you know, learn, learn empathy through the, the, the relationships that we're building with them and them with each other. And, um, that's, you know, like if the world could change, but like how we relate to one another is, is gonna, there's going to be some common threads in that forever, you know, and being able to look at somebody else and, uh, really truly listen to them and to, and to hear their perspective and to, you know, be compassionate, like see that there's other people around you that matter too, and not

just be self-centered. Those are things that are learned for sure. And not that we're the only ones involved in that process. There are people at school who are involved in that, but we're working on trying to cultivate that in a big way for them. Your relationship with your wife will definitely have, in my opinion, the largest impact on that for sure, right? They'll model that behavior.

Right, exactly. Stefan, can I make a U-turn here before we probably have to wrap up? Yeah, yeah, exactly. revolutionize my concept of training. And then fast forward to this year, prior to about a month ago, I'd only ever done one set of five unbroken ring muscle-ups. I'm not quite of the caliber of muscle-ups as my Estevan is over there. It's very hard movement for me. And then all of a sudden, I just decided to do this workout that included five sets of five ring muscle-ups. I hadn't actually been up on the high rings in at least six months. And I was able to do all five sets unbroken. Wow. And you talked about how when you stopped doing CrossFit competitively, you started changing the

way that you trained a little bit, heal your body with some of the motive and whatever. And I always thought like, man, if I'm going to get good at ring muscle-ups, I need to do negatives all the time. I need to get up on the rings every day. I need to do this, do this, do this. And somehow, the way I became more competent or proficient at doing them was by not doing them, but by doing tons of other stuff. And so when I look back, I was like, oh, in that time period, I had done a lot of core work and I had done a lot of upper body bodybuilding, which is upper body pressing has always been a weakness of mine. So I was just curious, you know, you, I'm assuming that you still have some kind of tapped into the competitive scene and know a little bit about what's going on.

But from your experience now being outside of it for, you know, five years or something, not really competing, have you noticed that, you know what, even if I go back, like I can see that workout and say, oh, that's kind of a cool workout they did in the open. Let me do that workout. Even though I don't do workouts like that that often, do you find that you can like excel in some of those? No, I cannot.

No, I cannot. And I'll tell you uh yeah um because you got old marcus or because why why why can't you i reached or because you were too good very very high level of fitness when the intent in everything i did was to be better and to get stronger and faster and build, you know, there, I brought, I brought that intent to every training session back then. Now I don't bring that intent to every training session. I don't have an intent of like, I want to get stronger. I want to get better. I want to, you know, I want to push limits. I go into my training nowadays and I'm just like, I want to feel like I gave effort, but I don't care where it takes me. You know, there's certain things I'm working on building strength wise, but they're not measurable as it

would relate to like CrossFit fitness metrics that are important. So there are workouts that are still like, I would consider like wheelhouse workouts for me, but I can't do, I would not be able to do any of them to the level that I did four years ago. And I get the question often, like, Hey, do you think you could get out there and still, you know, compete with, you know, your former competitors competitors and the answer is no i definitely couldn't if i decided today marcus like 2022 games do you want to go out and try and win the masters division if i truly wanted that and that was my intent i think there could be a possibility i'm not saying it would be easy but there's a possibility because I have a tremendous training background. I have good, great mechanics relative to the field.

I have, I've done it. So I know what it feels like. And I know what goes into it from a work perspective, but all of that means nothing. If you don't want it, if you can't, if you don't want it if you can't if you don't wake up each day you're like i want to do i'm doing this thing i got a purpose i don't have a purpose behind that stuff you know some athletes have a purpose because it pays the bill some athletes have a purpose because they just love it and it's who they're what their identity is some people just you know that they're just wired every day because that's still their drive. They're still on the climb. Right. They're still I'm going to get there. You know, I don't have any of that driving me.

And I hung on to the idea of coming back in the sport for a few years after 2016. And it just became super clear to me like I I lack that. Why? I lack that purpose to drive me to do what's really uncomfortable. The difference between going out and doing the training sessions I do today and the training sessions it would take or the effort and the intent to go back to competing, it might not look like a lot on paper, but emotionally and mentally and just that extra bit of physical, it's significant. It's super significant. And it's why I think when people get away from the sport long enough and they let go of that, they're like, oh, wow.

Life is really good when I'm not having to just bang my head against the competitive, you know, wall every day because it's it's exhausting. It's super exhausting. And that's on every level. So, no, there's there's nothing I'm I'm as good at as I was back then, except for I'm a much better mountain biker because I took up that sport since I started or since I stopped competing. And, uh, yeah, I could, I could hang on some mountain biking, but that's it. You know, I'm, I'm, and I'm, you know, I'm probably 10, I'm 10 pounds lighter than I was when I competed. I haven't cleaned, clean and jerked over 315 pounds or 300 pounds in a long time. I mean, I still have decent numbers. If you said, Hey, you, if you don't go out there and snatch 225 today, you know, we're going to chop off your daughter's fingers. I would do it, but I can't come anywhere close to 280 pounds.

Like I did it, you know, my best. And, and so it's just a, it's just a different, it's a different life, but I'm, I'm very content with my level of fitness. I'm still inspired to go out there and train. I love, I love training. I love it from the perspective of learning. What, what about that stuff that people see that's so inspiring from CrossFit? What actually applies to my, my client, my everyday, the everyday person out there, you know, I'm coaching people that I don't, if someone says, Hey, I want to go to the games, Marcus, will you coach me? I'm like, no, I'm not the person go check out, you know, big dogs, go check out training, think tank, go check out, like just go to other people.

Right. It's like, Hey, I think CrossFit looks cool, but I've never done it. Like, how should I, I'm like, Hey, I got some great stuff for you. I got a mix of CrossFit. I got a mix of bodybuilding. I got a mix of just quality movement in mind. I'm going to keep you moving for a long time. I don't care if you win, you know, I want you to win in your life. And, and that doesn't necessarily mean like having the fastest times. It doesn't. It means like doing it every day and just being consistent

that being said you uh you're you you nailed it your mechanics are amazing watching you move is amazing and um i just want to be clear what marcus is talking about is is the one percent of one percent of one percent if you want to be the healthiest fittest best looking guy in your local starbucks marcus will get you there tenfold still like so like for anyone he's really marcus has experienced fitness and pushing his body to levels that most of us can't understand even comprehend and so he's really really talking about the tip of the spear there don't think that anyone who follows this program, um, wouldn't run laps around everyone at the local Walmart a thousand times over.

So I just wanted to be clear about that. Yes. Um, Marcus, thank you. Thank you for your time. I know you're incredibly busy. Um, you're an incredibly inspirational figure for me because I watch you build your empire. What a fun thing you're doing. And clearly, you can tell from watching your work that simultaneously you're working on yourself to be a better human. So thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, it's been a pleasure to speak to both of you. And thanks for giving me a platform to come and talk about some things that, uh, I don't normally get asked about.

So I was telling some folks that I was coming on and I was just excited because I know you always, you always ask, um, you always ask the best questions of anybody I've, uh, come across in the media space for, uh, ever since I've known you. So yeah, thank you very much. Any parting words, Brian? No, it was just, it was great to talk to you. I think you're doing great stuff. Um, and, uh, you know, maybe we'll be able to meet down the road sometime. Yeah, that would be great. Nice to meet you, Brian. And thanks for saying that.