The Art of Functional Bodybuilding with Marcus Filly

Welcome back to the Alchemist Library podcast. Today on the show we have Marcus Filly. Marcus is a six time competitive CrossFit athlete, placing 12th in the world in the 2016 CrossFit Games. He is an absolute wealth of wisdom and this episode is jam packed with tools that are going to help you get into the best shape of your life in 2024. I'm going to leave it at that because I really want you guys to get into this episode already, so I'll catch you guys inside Peace. Are you doing this work to facilitate growth or to become famous? Which is more important Getting and letting go? Mr Marcus Filly, I appreciate you being here today.

Thanks, ryan, appreciate being here as well.

So I thought we'd get started here with a question I always asked to start, which is what's one concept, one idea, something that's had the biggest impact on you?

Relevant to health and fitness or just anything in life.

Take it in whichever direction you want.

Sure, I think with health and fitness it's and this is probably true for lots of aspects of life All good things take time, a lot of time, way more time than you want them to take, and that our time horizon, if we can adjust, adapt and believe more fluid with it and extend those we all stand to have, you know, much better outcomes in life and potentially enjoy the process more.

That's beautiful. I think it's something we all need to hear, especially right now. I have a lot of friends who are starting to get into fitness and bodybuilding and you know they see the results that I've gotten or other people have gotten, and they don't realize that that's like a 10-year journey.

Yeah.

And they want those results in six months. But it's a long game and it takes a while to get that desired outcome.

Yeah for sure. Well, and it's sort of like a culture. There's a shift happening, certainly in the culture right now and younger generations and I mean everybody it's no one's kind of protected from this but the way that technology moves and the way that we consume information and things are speeding up and so when things speed up around us, it has an impact on our internal expectations of how things should happen. You know, like well, you know they, in the span of two weeks, like so much changed around me. Why can't that should be happening to me inside my body, you know, and physiology, and the way our bodies adapt and overcome things, adapt to stress. That is not a that's, that's not a. You know we're not on the same trajectory as modern day technology. Modern day, like, our bodies are not adapting anywhere near the rate that this exponential growth curve is happening in technology and happening in society in many regards. So it's something that people are going to become there.

It's already hard for people, it's going to be even harder. You know this like concept of oh, I just want a pill to fix things. Like people want to pill to fix things because there's an, there's this expectation that the solution should be easy or should be faster than it actually is. And if we've had a hard time with that in the past, it's only going to get harder as we start to see, like, well, they solve this major technological problem in a matter of six months. Like, why haven't, why can't I lose my love handles faster. There should be a quick solution. And then, to add to that, you know biotech is also going to speed up in its you know development and there may very well be some you know a growing number of solutions and quotes that get people fast results. But I just think there's a fundamental problem with like, hey, a fast result likely is going to come with some side effects or some problems.

There's unintended consequences with everything. It's so crazy the direction all that stuff's heading in. I was listening to a podcast the other day with like a next generation biohacking type of doctor out of Dubai who's doing like gene therapy, and I think what they're doing is inhibiting what's going to happen in some type of gene that limits muscle building. I think it's like myostatin or something like that.

And these people are getting these crazy, crazy muscle building results by just taking this pill. Wow, and it's like I wonder how long until like a nice physique is not even a status symbol anymore, just because it's so quote unquote. Easy to attain through a pill or injection or whatever it may be.

Yeah, I don't think it's. I mean, I think you're already seeing glimpses of that with you know pharmaceutical grade, you know performance enhancing drugs, Like right, people are getting more access to higher or high quality PDs and you know hormones and a lot of people are able to build, you know, shockingly impressive physiques very relatively quickly. Right, like, okay, this physique naturally might take 10 years to build. This person got it in two to three years, right, and then you know if that's, if we've shrunk that down in the past couple of decades or in the last decade, then you know what does another decade look like? Or another two decades look like where you know teenager comes to the gym in 2044 and they're like, hey, I want to start lifting.

It's like, okay, well, come over here, let me like take this, take this, take this like start your training, and you know, within six months they're like hulking out Like I don't know. Like I mean, like I said, there's, there's going to be tools and strategies and things that you know technology makes possible, but like our physiology again, like fundamentally has not, you know, is not going to evolve in 20 years to be able to handle that kind of, you know, accelerated growth. Like there's going to be some consequence. That happens, I would foresee. But hey, again back to the original questions. Like the good things that just take time, you know, and with with health and fitness, there's you know, there's.

There's always going to be a vanity part of this where people are like I want to look a particular way, but you know the other values that you get from living a, you know, consistent, healthy lifestyle with good nutrition, quality sleep, good movement, resistance, training all the things that I preach and many other fitness professionals preach. You know you gain things that are not just vanity, like you gain the. There's health markers, of course, we could talk about, but there's, there's confidence that comes from doing work. There's resilience. There's, you know, other character traits that I don't it's hard to, you can't replace with without doing the work.

I just recently, today, I got sent a video by, you know, one of my followers on Instagram. They, they sent me a video. This was a 2016,. This video got published. It was a YouTube recap of the 2016 Northern California or, excuse me, california men's regional competition in CrossFit. So I competed in CrossFit and they, they, they would put, they filmed these documentary type videos that would like showcase, like the behind the scenes of the competition and it was just one of the best videos like I think I'd ever got produced, and I happened to be one of the competitors. I did well that weekend and so I got a lot of airtime on this two hour video.

But I was watching myself in the video and I was, like you know, this is seven years ago. I was a very different person back then, you know, as an athlete and what I was doing and what my focus was in life Like I didn't have kids, I, you know, hadn't even gotten, I'd just gotten married. Like I was at the peak of my athletic career. I was 15 pounds heavier, pretty much all muscle. Like I was doing crazy fit stuff, you know, out there on the competition floor and I, just, I was just like I could just see like this, this confidence in this like person, person that was there and that was like this was the culmination of an eight year career in a rigorous sport and I was like that was me, like at my peak, at my best, like I had there was so much happening in that behind the scenes of that person, that human, and that were the culmination of just such a long, almost a decade of, of, of of focus on a sport. And I'm like I can't even, like I almost can't even replicate that because I I don't put in that kind of effort anymore in that way in my life. I put effort in other places in my life. Now like my focus has changed, but it was just I got like I kind of got the chills watching. I was like, holy shit, look at that guy, like I can't believe what you were able to accomplish.

And the result, like the, the, the result of just so much consistency and hard work and and and commitment that, yeah, it was. It meant more than just the fact that I could snatch 265 pounds at the end of a hard, you know workout. In between it was talking to me off camera. It was, wow, look at that. Like that's, that's an incredible thing and I don't, I don't many people don't even see that. They don't ever, they will never get to experience that and, unfortunately, in the way that the fitness industry might be moving or the fitness, medical, biohacking community might be moving, you know we might strip people and I think that's the the opportunity of ever experiencing something like that, because there'll be ways to kind of get to those outcomes physically, aesthetically, faster, without putting in the same dedication and work Possibly.

There will always be some sort of inherent aura or something that comes alongside suffering and really just focus effort at towards a goal for a long period of time Because, inherently, like, that process just changes you as a person you like to. You see it for everybody who who starts going to a gym consistently, their entire personality, their confidence that there's just an inherent change that happens within you that is not entirely connected to just how your physique looks. It's like all those hours and that that work you put in the gym and in the kitchen, it's like it all culminates to a certain aura that you just develop.

No doubt yeah, and I want that for people more than I want the abs or the biceps or the whatever you know it's and that's what people need more than the abs.

I mean, yeah, they don't, they don't need they don't. Many people don't even know that that's what they need. I mean, they, they actually. I think they could understand it and they can conceptualize that pretty pretty easily. It's like what do you? You know, hey, what do you want? What are your goals? Like, oh, I want to get in shape. Okay, what is what does being in shape mean? Oh, it means, you know, dropping 10 pounds. Okay, when you drop 10 pounds, like what's that going to give you I'm going to fit in my clothes better? Okay, when you fit in your clothes better, like what is that going to mean? Well, I'm going to like, I'm going to, I'm going to look good when I'm at the office or when I'm out with my friends, and okay, and then how does that make you feel? It's like what makes me feel more confident? It makes me feel, you know, it's like okay. So what we're after here is you want to build your confidence up. Because if you build your confidence up, what? What happens? Then? It's like oh, I think people respect me more, and then I could finally find this you know the romantic partner that I want. It's like okay, and that. So guess what? You get all that when you put yourself first and you do the hard work and you're disciplined in the kitchen, because every time you hit the gym and you're disciplined, you're basically telling yourself that you're the most important person and you'll do whatever it takes to become the confident human that you deserve To be. And Once you've done that, people see it and they're like, oh hell, yeah.

I remember actually it was so funny like I was in a pretty big bodybuilding phase in college and I was gonna apply to medical school. I mean, I went to medical school but I applied to medical school and I remember I was like, really I was like God, you know, I had this. I was really into my, my training. At the time I was in that phase of like discovering, you know, for one of the first times in my life, like how I could just put all the pieces together with training, nutrition, discipline and just like Create this level of confidence. And I remember saying to my like roommate who like didn't get it, you know, was kind of Living a different lifestyle. What we weren't, you know, it wasn't my training partner, anything like that. I was like God.

When I show up in that interview and I'm just like just Jacked and like I feel I fit out. Like you know, I fill out my suit coat really well. Like these people are just gonna be. Like this guy is means business. Like we're letting this guy in the medicals Like he's he's the real deal. You know, cuz I got the grades, I got the scores, but I'm showing up and they're gonna see me as like this confident, like you know Built guy who like obviously works his ass off. I, like roommate, was like what are you talking about? Like just a meathead like. But you know there's something to that and I see it in. I see it in like some of these you know social media. I Don't even call him influencers.

This is one guy I don't even know his name. He's like a sales sales guy Runs these sales training programs and he like I've seen some of his content. He's like if you don't have a six pack, you don't work for me. It's like what you know. He's got the guy like at one of his trainings who's up and he's like kind of grilling him and they're doing little mock sales things and the guys a little Overweight and out of shape and he's like, hey, take your shirt off right now and the guys like, alright, he like takes his shirt off, he's got, you know, a little bit of a dad bod, got a little belly. He's like how's it feel to be up there right now? He's like I feel like shit. He's like, yeah, you look like you know, he's like really harsh on the guy and not the kind of content and not the kind of message I'm I support, but it's this like you got a, like he's coming out from the wrong way.

But it's like when you, when you work on yourself and you build the confidence and you're like dedicated in these ways, like you Show up differently. You know and I know I'm not saying that like you got to be ripped to be a confident human being. I really don't think that. Like I really don't think that a six-pack abs or what people should strive for, I think it's just that's kind of bullshit.

I think what people should strive for is Building a level of discipline and consistency around their health and wellness that feeds them the confidence like you can. You can have, you know, 20% body fat and be strong and be disciplined and make good choices most of the time and train hard and Build muscle and feel confident as hell. Like it doesn't. It doesn't come when you magically like drop below 10% Body fat, you suddenly become this confident human. It's like, no, no, no, it comes from doing the work, it comes from just being dedicated, whereas somebody's like I'm gonna go get on these pills, I'm gonna take these injections and I'm gonna go on this drug to make me lose a bunch of weight, and Then I'm gonna be confident because I'm gonna look a certain way. But you might not even experience that because you Didn't actually do the thing repeatedly.

That gave you that, you know, character trait and I wonder if it would even be worse for people. I know you see People who come fast into, like winning the lottery or becoming famous super quickly, and there's almost like this feeling within you that you don't deserve it.

So you begin to like self-sabotage in ways, and I'm sure that's probably going to be the same thing, as these things just advance to get Better and stronger. It's like that human nature. We almost feel like we need to work hard at something, and if we don't and we still achieve that thing, there's like this inherent need to sabotage it.

Yeah but, it's the faster you lose it, the harder it is to keep it off. You know, the the quicker you grow it, the harder it is to to save it and to sustain it. And that's been true in every, every part of my life and as a as a parent I think parents out there understand this. It's like you know there's there's probably nothing quite like going from not being a parent to being a parent. Like you, your first child you went from, I Mean overnight or in an instant. You literally have a human life that you now have to figure out what to do with. Like that is.

And you know, when something changes that dramatically, that quickly, it is massively stressful. It's like you know. And Anyway, I think it just speaks to like big change quickly is very hard in in either direction. You know Somebody would say like well, the argument is like if I won the lottery, like what wouldn't be that hard, like tomorrow I'd be pretty fucking stoked. It's like, yeah, I get it and then, but but there's, there's a lag time on, like where the challenges might, might show up. You know.

That is for sure. So for that person who's looking to get, to get right, get either back into shape or they just want to Start optimizing things more and know it's a new year, which is why I'm asking this question yeah, but what do you think some of the biggest levers are for those people in the gym diet wise, what are those things that really gonna have that outsized return?

Yeah, there's, there's. There's a few key areas I Think we could start with. We'll start with training, because I think people you know know me for training or that's sort of something that I've been doing for years, but Absolutely it is resistance. Training is where you're gonna get an outsized return. So I Think I think there's an understanding that you know hey, I got a move, I got a train, I got to exercise. If I want to, you know, make some positive impacts on my health.

But the miss, the mistake a lot of people have made is thinking about movement as as like the. The purpose of movement is to increase expenditure of energy or burn calories. Right, your exercise and your training is not, is not about, it should never be thought of as burning calories. If you're like I got to go and burn calories, then you're Going about things the wrong way In, and here's why, in a given day, somebody will burn, you know, a certain amount of calories. The percentage of calories that any average person burns from their exercise is usually 10, maybe 15% of their total daily calorie burn. So that is a small lever to pull for in terms of changing your energy output or your energy expender, your energy equation. Instead, the purpose of training should be about building muscle, strength muscle. Perhaps function should be thrown in there. But Most people it's just go and build some muscle, because Once you build muscle your energy expenditure on a daily basis at a baseline goes up so see, yeah, relatively significantly.

I mean not, as it's not like you're gonna go from burning 2000 calories to 3000 calories because you have a little bit more muscle, but those calories that you burn at rest Compound or not, like they happen every day. So it's like if you've got more muscle and you're burning an extra 200 calories a day just at rest because you have more muscle, more muscle means a bigger metabolic engine. Your metabolic, your metabolism, is burning higher. Right metabolism is essentially just it's. It's almost like a one-to-one relationship to how much muscle you have, more or less. I mean it's oversimplified, but it's a good way for the audience to think about it. So training should be about building muscle and and therefore the best way to build muscle is through resistance training. It's not through boot camp, it's not through CrossFit, it's not through, you know, running a marathon like yeah are there people who are runners, that have muscular legs?

sure, but you know, take the amount of time someone spends running for marathon training and you apply that to a resistance training program, you're gonna build a lot more muscle. If anyone's listening, who's like I don't want to be bulky, I don't want to be a bodybuilder, that's okay, like Understandable. You're going. I've been lifting weights for, you know, 25 years and I, you know I Only weigh 180 pounds. I'm muscular. Nobody ever stops me like are you a bodybuilder? Like, and I'm trying to get big, like in order to be a bodybuilder that people see and Like, damn, you're a bodybuilder, you've got to be Absolute training, savage and probably taking you know some exogenous hormones. So that's not gonna happen. But you should get in the gym. You should resistance train. If you're training three days a week or less, every time you're in the gym it should be a full-body training session. You should be doing every muscle group head to toe. So a squat, a Put a press, a pulling exercise, a hinging exercise, you know some isolation work, cover the whole body. That is absolutely the way to go. If you're gonna train four days or five days a week, you can do. You know different type of training splits like push, pull legs or up or lower type of things, because you're going more frequently. But if you're going three days a week or less, full body, get in, work hard, lift close to failure. Do it safely. If you don't know how to lift yet, get on machines, get on things that are just a little bit more stable and safe. So that's the first.

Then the second thing, now that we've discussed training, is movement. So movement is not the same as training and exercise. This is just you getting out of a sitting position more often. So this is the walking. This is like getting your steps in every day.

It's so interesting when most people actually look at their step count each day and they uncover just how little they're actually moving or get an objective measurement of how much they're moving.

This is something that our society, our culture, our way of living, in most instances, at least in Western society, has absolutely put people into more sedentary states. We just don't get up and move enough and it's not going to get better any time soon. We're not going to suddenly drive less, commute more by foot, move into more communities where things are accessible and you walk to the store and people are getting more spread out, more isolated, more sedentary, more work from home, less driving to the office, less commuting to the office, less walking up and down the stairs, less getting up at the office and going and talking to people, and it's just sitting, sitting, sitting, and so we actually have to start to take a measurable approach to combating that problem, and the best way is just to look at your step count every day and to be intentional about raising it. So there's no right amount of steps to take. It's what's my current step amount and how can I improve that or increase that by a small margin. That's it.

So if you get a step tracker and that could be like a pedometer that you buy on Amazon. It could be your phone. As long as you have it with you at all times, I like to have a watch that has a step tracker on it. Just wear it for a few days. How many steps did I take in the last few days? Just living my normal everyday life? I walked 4,000 steps on average. Great, let's bump that up to six. What is that? Going to take Two 10-minute intentional walks on top of your normal daily activity? Or maybe you go for a 30-minute walk in the morning as soon as you get up, or maybe every time you get up to go to the bathroom during the day, you walk to the bathroom that is on the other side of the building or it's parking an extra four blocks from work or the school or whatever. You come up with strategies. So, full body resistance training you got to train to build muscle. Number two you got to move a little bit more, and that's steps. Number three we'll get into talking about nutrition, and for nutrition, there's really two pillars that I like people to focus on. But number one supports the first thing we talked about, which is building muscle and that is just focusing on getting more protein in your diet. It's talked about so much that I think people are becoming numb to just how powerful that is. They're like oh, I've heard the protein thing. I heard the protein thing. If you're not actually eating a gram of protein per pound of body weight every day, then you haven't heard it enough or you heard it too much and you became numb to the power of this thing. It is so important. It is the easiest tool that you have at your disposal to optimize your muscle mass. That's why we eat it. It's to optimize your muscle mass so that we can build the metabolism we talked about earlier. It is also the easiest thing you have access to to impact how full you feel.

Nutrition diets everybody is playing the same game how do I eat so that I can feel full with fewer calories? That's it. Humans all eat until we're full. We all do it. If you do it with these types of foods over on my right hand, you do it with this many calories. But if you eat it with these types of foods, if you eat until you're full, you're going to get twice as many calories. You know what I'm talking about. If I eat a bowl of cereal and a donut, I'm going to need three giant bowls and two donuts to feel full. If I eat three bowls of broccoli, chicken breast and a big white potato, I'm going to get to feeling full with about a third of the amount of calories and that's it.

It's like you got to eat plenty of protein, and we have to generally select foods that fill us up without as much energy, and that's going to come in the fruits, vegetables. Things like that are high volume foods, typically any food that has a lot of fiber in it, and so I'm a big proponent of focus on your protein and focus on getting more fiber. If you can do those two things, you are probably going to make a dramatic impact on your health, body composition, muscle mass. So that's a super simple thing. I hope that was.

I didn't. I mean I may. I mentioned calories, but like I don't need you to count calories, I need you to count how much protein you're getting, and I need you to start aiming to get above 30 grams of fiber every day, and that might mean looking at a label and being like how much fibers? Okay, I got to eat some of that, right? I aim for 60 to 75 grams of fiber Many days. I'm getting close to 100. And I eat 200 plus grams of protein every day and it is not hard to eat in a way that makes me feel great and look great and be healthy if you do those things.

Lift weights, walk. Get enough protein, get some fiber in.

And then the last one is the best way to describe this or to say it, to label it. It's become a consistent, but build better sleep consistency. So this and here's here's, here's like people, the, the, the quantity and the quality of your sleep matter dramatically on your health. But how, how do we get people to actually understand that? Well, we have to connect it to something that they're like oh, that is tangible, like I, and the evidence really speaks very powerfully to sleep deprivation and our appetite slash, weight gain. I was listening to a sleep scientist on a podcast recently. It was like well, this is the, probably the most like the, the, the most closely correlated phenomenon that they see in all of sleep science is that when you deprive people of sleep, we see impacts to their appetite regulation, like directly. Sleep science has been going on for decades and there's a lot of unknown stuff there that they don't understand. This is something that they understand. Clearly, if you reduce someone's sleep below that six hour mark, they're their appetite, like the hunger hormone goes up, the satiety or I feel full hormone goes down. They increase the number of calories that they're eating and their Cravings or their desire for foods that are more of those like high energy, high calorie, dense foods like breads, pasta, cereals, you know, cakes, cookies, things like that goes up substantially. So, those factors all together, your sleep deprived, you're going to eat more, not to mention the impacts that it has on, you know, mental health, cognitive function and and many, many more things. But so we know that that has to change.

Well, what's the first step to changing that? And in my opinion, it is Creating consistency in your sleep, which is go to bed and wake up at the same time, seven days a week. There's no weekend. There's no sleeping in, there's no I'm gonna pull an all-nighter either. It's you go to bed at this time and you wake up at this time, and I don't care what that time frame is for you.

When you start, I think most people have consistent sleep schedules and that is far that that is. That is the first thing to sort of correct for, did you? You know, I went to bed at 10, I woke up at 6, or I went to bed at 10, I woke up at 5, or went to bed at 11. I woke up at 5, whatever it is like, keep it consistent. And so you start with hey, I'm getting six hours of sleep a night. It's not optimal, but at least it's consistent.

And once you have something consistent in your life, then you have the power to change it. But if you're like I am all over the map and I want to get eight hours of sleep, it's like, well, you got a. You got to start with something, a baseline. So those are my, I guess, five things. It's lift weights, full body, build muscle. Start to walk More steps than you currently walk.

Eat more protein a gram per pound of body weight. Get more fiber in your diet. Try and get north of 30 grams per day. If you're eating 10 grams per day, just go up by five. Then go up by another five, you know. If you're eating 20 grams per day, you know, okay, you can go up by 510. Whatever you know, try and move that number a little bit higher, because the foods that are full and rich in fiber are Are generally those high volume, low calorie foods and have a lot of health benefits to them as well. And then the last is dial in your sleep consistency. If you do all those five things in 2024, you will arrive at the end of the year and you will be like whoa I'm a different person, without question, if you're not doing them already.

There is so much to be said there. There's so many lynching points. I could hop on, but just overall, it's, the beauty in that approach is You're not. You didn't mention restricting anything specific. Yeah, there is room to Live your life when you take that approach and you have these consistent habits, because you know the biggest fear for people is giving up certain things. But when you take the approach of doing those five core things that we mentioned, one, the desire for those things is gonna go down. Your ability to eat that whole pie of pizza is is gonna go down because you're gonna be fuller and you're not gonna have that desire. It's gonna be easier to just have that one slice of pizza and it just makes for a more holistic, long-term approach to Long-term approach. It's not extreme in any ways. It gives you that wiggle room to have the consistency to do that for a long time.

Yeah, I agree, and that is certainly something that I've thought about a lot. And coaching over my career is, you know, but the best, the best strategy is One of addition rather than subtraction. When you're working with people, you know, come, do more of this. Yeah, do more of that. Because if you do more of the good stuff For long enough, you start to feel a particular way and you have the Internal motivation desire to take out the bad stuff.

Right, if I come in and I say, okay, hey, the first thing we're gonna do is I'm gonna take all the, I'm gonna take away all the things that you really like right now, you're just like fuck, this sucks. You know, I'm really not into you. You're not my coach. Like, hey, I just need you to throw away everything. You know, it's like, yeah, it's like when someone's like, hey, man, you got to go on a detox, you got to cut out your coffee, it's like coffee is like my favorite part of my day right now. Can we start somewhere else? I Love that. Like there's like a, there's like a real Template audio. That's like, you know, if you decrease, if you cut out coffee, you know, but like whatever, whatever, like you are guaranteed to be a grumpier person.

It's like you think they're gonna like say something like some great health benefits, like if you cut out your coffee for 10 days, you are guaranteed to be a grumpy, angry, terrible friend.

You always get me wanting these, like lattes and cappuccinos with your raw milk and your nice.

Oh yeah. I'm having a little issue with my espresso machine right now. It's Scott, it's got some, it's got some issues. I got a call like a, like a maintenance company to come in. It's really bumming me out, sucks.

So, upsetting.

So it's like a high performance car. It's like you know things. It breaks and you're like damn it, I got a call on a specialist for this. I don't have a high performance car. I don't drive a very fancy car at all. I've, I've, I've, I drive my mom's Two or three vehicles prior to her current one I purchased from her.

And so one thing I want to be sure to ask you was so, like I mentioned earlier, I have a few friends who are starting to get into the weightlifting game, and Mm-hmm. The one thing that multiple of them keep having an issue with that I don't really remember ever having a problem with is they can't activate certain muscles, like during a chest, during a chest day, just get all triceps and they can't activate that muscle. They can't really get a pump in certain areas.

Sure.

So I guess that's an issue for a lot of people getting started that I wasn't really too aware of.

Yeah, well, there's a couple ways to think about it. Number one there's this idea of like muscle activation. Like I got a, I got to activate certain muscles. It's a little misleading. I mean you know muscles insert on your, you know it at different places on the body and you know when you, when those muscles lengthen or shorten, you know by moving a joint or moving two bones Further apart or closer together, you know muscles contract. I mean that just happens.

You know this is the sensation of somebody feeling the muscle working is Different. It's like you know, if you Like, if I stand up, my glutes are working. You know it's like I don't feel my glutes. It's like, well, like they're not activated. It's like, well, they just haven't worked hard enough for you to feel the Metabol, like the, the.

You know that the whatever, a burn or some sensation that is generally created by a couple things. You feel a muscle working when there's a lot of tension on that muscle. You feel that muscle working when you've done a sufficient number of reps under tension, where you start to get and produce these metabolites in the muscle, where they're like, you know you're working, so you're burning sugars to try and create more energy, atp, so those muscles can contract. And you get these. You know Cross, you know these, these muscle fibers that are shortening and lengthening After a lot of that sugar burning up. You get maybe some lactic acid, you get some. You know Some different pH changes in the muscle and that feels like a burn. You know these. Those are the sensations that people I think equate to like okay, my muscles working, it's like well, even if you're not feeling that your muscle worked, you know, but it's good to feel that because that's a sign. It's one sign that you're like pushing close to Exhaustion, which is a place where, where muscles gonna get stimulated and adapt and grow. So, you know, if you're feeling like you're doing bench press, but it's like all I'm feeling is my triceps, it doesn't mean that your chest isn't working, it just means that your triceps are working harder or they're weaker or they're a limiter in this exercise for you and Every body, every human and their bodies, you know, will probably adapt and feel movement slightly differently.

You know, if your Triceps are weak and you're trying to do a bunch of bench press and you're benching with a pretty narrow grip and you don't have Great form, then every time you do a rep, there's a lot of stress on your triceps, you're not getting as much of a stretch in your pec, which is basically how can I, how much can I get my you know humorous to move away from my sternum Right? The more I stretch, that okay, the more stretch there is in my pec. Then when I press up, that is going to shorten and I'm going to get a contraction. But if I'm pressing in a way where I'm not lengthening that as much but I'm really putting a lot of length and or a lot of stretch into my tricep, that okay, my triceps are working. So like a close grip bench press versus a wide grip bench press. It's not as simple as just do I go wide or do I go narrow, but it's like how do you move your shoulder in these different ranges and the problem I think I mean this is a problem. I wouldn't even say it's a problem it's something that you want to focus on when you're more of an intermediate advanced lifter.

When you're a beginning lifter, it's just like stick to the fundamentals, move the weight and Try and get stronger every single week. If you're just getting into training and something's like I'm not feeling my chest, I'd be like I wouldn't sweat it. Like, go in and do bench press, you know, next week try and do a little bit more weight than this week. The week after that try and do a little bit more weight or a little bit more reps, you know. Okay, if your triceps are limiting you right now, stick with it. After a month your triceps are going to be better Condition and you're going to be able to go up and wait and at some point you're gonna be like, damn, my chest is growing. You know it's just gonna happen. And then make sure you're trying different exercises. So like, don't just do the same bench press for chest. Like, do a chest fly, do a cable chest press. You know, by changing the movement or the implement that you're using, you're gonna start to feel different sensations. And the sensations that you're feeling don't necessarily mean that they're not getting trained. Like, even if your triceps are going to failure Before your chest, is that failure? You still are getting a stimulus in your chest because you're actually I mean, you're performing, you know adduction of the humorous right so like that's actually shortening the pectoral muscle under tension.

But it's often a matter of technique, it's often a matter of, you know, underdevelop certain body parts that are maybe, you know, limiting you and, and, and often it's you know, exercise, exercise selection. It's like I'm doing the there's a. There's an exercise that might be better for you to feel your Chest working. Some people like they do glute, not glue bridges, hip thrusts. This is a popularized movement for growing glutes. They feel their group glutes like crazy. Some people do them and they don't feel their glutes at all, they just feel their back working. But when they do deep squats they feel their. Their butt just gets super sore.

So it's like find the one that feels the best for you and don't just assume because, like the guy with the biggest chest in the gym is doing flat bench Press, that that's what's gonna work for you. So you know you're gonna be able to do that Chest in the gym is doing flat bench press. That that's what's gonna work for you. One tip for those individuals who might be feeling something like that is explore more dumbbells and cables as your implements, because when you're doing barbell stuff, there's a lot of compensation that can happen, and you know there's. If. If you're relatively new and you don't have good body awareness and control of you know your movement patterns, you might find yourself in just some positions that don't work If you have access to some machines you know. Play around with different machines and and just see like what, what you know, which ones make you feel it in the place that you want to feel it.

I think that's perfect advice. It's funny because they they say that the cable machine and certain dumbbell movements are the only time that they feel that activation, and then certain times on, like a chest press machine, but when they do barbell stuff, like he said, yeah. That's where the overcompensation happens.

Yeah, and they can build a ton of muscle and strength with dumbbells and cables, like you don't need to barbell bench press Ever to get a big chest. You know it helps if you have good mechanics, but there's plenty of examples of people that don't and, to be honest, like I find a lot of lifters you know later in their life and their career, when they're like more advanced, they just they're like yeah, I'm done with the barbell because it just doesn't, it doesn't put me in good positions anymore. Like you know, now they become concerned about joint health and longevity, and cables and dumbbells just provide them a little bit more Flexibility around what, however? How their body moves uniquely.

I think that's a perfect segue to functional bodybuilding, because it's something you've created your brand around and One I love that name functional bodybuilding because it combines, I think, what we're all trying to achieve, which is that aesthetic physique, but also having the freedom and the mobility to play sports and to be active and and have that that feel of safety within Sports and and just life in general. How do you use your approach? Differ, you think, from traditional bodybuilding? What are those biggest differences between the functional side of things versus just the average way of lifting weights?

I Would say that you know, bodybuilding to me is the application of training principles to Stimulate the most muscle growth possible. So hypertrophy is growth of muscle cells, and that is the goal. What can we do to make the muscles grow, and Some of the methods for doing that are I mean, there's lots of tried and true methods. You know, there are experts at that, there are professionals in the sport of that. It's it's a science, it's a sport, it's a, it's a deep passion and the methods that work there. It's like, if we're, if one of the things I said is like, what's gonna give you the most bang for your buck is, you know, resistance training to build muscle, because muscle is gonna give you the look, the function and the metabolism that you want then why would you not want to use the people that are best in the world at it to learn from and to apply principles right? It's like you know, if you want to build muscle like if someone's like I want to get toned that is another way of saying I want to build muscle why would you go to somebody who's not an expert at building muscle to get toned? Why would you go to it? This is not a shot at Pilates. But like you know, matt Pilates, a lot of Women will go and say I want to go, I do it because I want to get long and lean, and they're doing these, like you know, long, extended Isometric holds which can build strength and make you feel really good and but they're not Like conducive to building muscle. Like that is not how you build and like that the science of hypertrophy doesn't make sense there. So Hypertrophy is bodybuilding. Is that science? Now, if you look at somebody who has taken that to the extreme and built the most muscle on the human frame possible and you evaluate how they move and their cardiovascular output, their work capacity and the the, the breadth of their movement capabilities, like the skills that they have, it's not, it's not exceptional, right? So like Chris Bumstead, who's like the best bodybuilder in the world, like his aerobic capacity is is Not great, it's not exceptional. You know he's got a sports background, so he's pretty athletic, but at this point, like, could he do very athletic things? No, because he's, he's Taken like he's taken the thing to the extreme and when you take anything to extreme you leave out the opportunity to do something else. You know, could he perform high, like a Wide variety of movements. You know, does he have the flexibility and the mobility to do that? You know the answer is like no, relative to other people. So I'm like, okay, there's that. And then you look over it, like I Come from a CrossFit background, you know it's like what did Crossfitters do?

Like well, we had a tremendous amount of aerobic capacity, a lot of work, pat, like so I could do a lot of work in a short amount of time, which requires, you know, cardi, respiratory fitness on top of strength, on top of you know, muscle endurance. So all these like traits that that blended themselves very well to CrossFit. But if you're a, if you're an elite Crossfitter in the world like you Oftentimes, I mean you you'll have a lot of muscle, but you may also give up something by trying to be an elite Crossfitter, which is you're generally overstressed, you're generally how, you carry a lot of injuries regularly. So there's like a beat down and a burnout that happens. So like how can I be like a good Crossfitter and have like the skills and the mobility and the range of motion and you know, the capacity, the energy, like the ability to do work and also have like the muscle building potential of a bodybuilder but, like, essentially combined these things right.

I'm giving a super long-winded answer to what functional bodybuilding is, but this is kind of how I've. You know, I kind of see it. It's it's being a little bit of a jack of all trades, having the ability to, you know, understand how to build muscle, understand how to build aerobic capacity or work capacity, and then really maintain great health in your joints and mobility. And with those three sort of central concepts, you know, what are the training methods that would get us, that would allow us to do that. And that's what I've been chasing for, you know, the better part of a decade now.

So those things that would be so, obviously, the traditional weightlifting Weightlifting um not putting yourself in situations that are going to either get you hurt or Just be too much load for the body. Um still keeping that aerobic base. And making sure we're getting our, our steps in and our um, our cardio up and then, um, it would be some of the um, like mobility side of things. What, what is?

yeah, like that. To me that's that piece of the puzzle is Exploring movement. So you know it's like coming into the gym and Squatting super heavy with the goal of, like, creating a lot of tension in the legs and the trunk so that you can, you know, stimulate them to grow, versus coming to the gym and performing. You know a type of squat when I know you're not going to be able to squat a lot of weight. An example would be a Cossack squat. It's like an exercise where you kind of do like a lateral lunge. You go into like a deep squat on one leg. You know it's part mobility, it's part range of motion, it's part strength training, it's part unilateral. It's sort of like this Yoga meets, strength meets, you know, kind of playtime, stretching, um. And If you ask me like, hey, what's the best way to build strength muscle in your legs, I would not. You know you're not seeing Chris Bumstead do Cossack squats to grow his quads right, but I do A heavy squat or a heavy leg press and then, as my accessory movement, I go do Cossack squats. Okay, I'm still getting some muscle growth or stimulation. You know some strength benefits there, but I'm getting this like added mobility. I'm taking my hip through a really great deep range of motion. I'm maintaining health in my ankles and my knees and my hips and low back. I'm working on balance and stability. You know there's there.

So that's like you know, movement quality, movement capacity, skill and and it's sort of like, okay, well, if I, if I dedicate to doing that, that's one exercise. I mean, you only got time to do, let's say, six to eight exercises in the gym a day. So I've, I've, I've taken one and I've I dedicated to doing something that wasn't the best way to build muscle. It built other characteristics and so it's a conscious choice to say I have to fill my. This is my bucket. I only got these six to eight exercises I'm gonna do each day. There's a certain balance and a blend of how many I'm gonna do that are here to like push my intensity the highest, and how many are here to like explore my mobility and get me into new positions and work on my hip strength and my balance, and then which ones are here for aerobic work and capacity, you know. And so it's this juggle of like. There's only so many hours in in a week to train. How are you gonna dedicate your time?

If I just came in and I did heavy leg press, then heavy squats, then I did heavy lunges and then I did heavy leg extensions and that was all I did, I would build a ton of muscle. It would be super intense and it would definitely move the needle. And and then where in my training program am I adding in some of these other movements to help me maintain great range of motion mobility? You know, like, or like the alternative for somebody's, like oh, I'm gonna go stretch an hour at home. It's like, okay, well, now you just add an hours to your day to try and do it all. Yeah, when I trained for CrossFit, I trained three to four hours a day. I did an hour of weightlifting, olympic lifting. I did, you know, an hour and a half of just straight-up cardio. I did gymnastics. I did all this, you know. I stretched like I did all the stuff, but nobody's got time for that, you know. So how do we bring those things into? You know, comprehensive training method and program that's what functional bodybuilding is to me.

Yeah, I want to explore that, that concept of combining those two things, and I think the way I want to do it here is, you see this guy, chris Williamson the host of Modern. Wisdom. He's had a bunch of bodybuilders on and he keeps asking them this question, which is if you only had to do 10 exercises for the rest of your life, what would those 10 be? I think that would be a cool way to explore how you would think about that combination.

Yeah, I've heard him ask this question to bodybuilders before Probably I would do a, I would guess, like a Smith machine squat. I think that to me is a perfect blend of stability but also, like I know, I can squat into deep positions and yeah, so I can maintain a lot of good mobility there. So that's my squat, I would you know, for a press it's a toss up for me, but I would probably go with like a dumbbell incline bench press. I love. I don't love barbell bench pressing. It doesn't work for me. But to compliment that, I would actually be doing a because I was going to say dips but I think I'm going to pull dips into a ring muscle up. So I'm going to do ring muscle ups because there's a pull and a push there but the stability or the instability of the rings is such a powerful tool and so strict ring muscle up with that, with the ring muscle ups, how much harder is doing a traditional muscle up on a like a traditional pull up bar?

Yeah, the rings, are the rings easier, harder?

If you're doing strict muscle ups where you're like not using kipping and momentum, I would probably. I would say that the rings are probably easier, just because with rings you on the shoulders yeah, the rings you can just maneuver your body in between them, whereas with the bar you have to actually you have to pull with so much speed and force that you can kind of like like arc around it. Okay, so we're only at three. I got to pick up the pace here. I would probably put a for like a cardio tool. I would probably put the rowing machine in there. I think that that's a pretty powerful aerobic tool. I would probably put the Nordic bench in there as well. So Nordic hamstring curls, that would probably be my. You know, like I know, people love the seated hamstring curl for like growing their hamstrings. But I find the functionality and the strength development that would happen through the Nordic to be pretty, and also I can do them fairly well, so I can use them in a hypertrophy setting too, and you most people can, if they just understand how to scale them. I would. I'd like to have a row in there like a weighted row, so probably like a, like a seated cable row.

I think I'm going to rely on those rings for like all of my vertical pulling. So no lap pull downs, no strict pull ups, I'm just going to be doing muscle ups. For that I'd probably get like a heavy sandbag that I could use for like. It's like a like. It'd be kind of like combo. Good morning. Like you know, sandbag cleans over the shoulder, so like that instead of a deadlift, just because I could use that for a lot of conditioning work too. So this is kind of turning into like movements, but also implements that I want to have access to. We're at seven. We're at seven.

We're at seven and we've got almost everything we have. We have back. We have chest cardio hamstrings, quads, glutes and back kind of shoulders with the ring muscle up.

Yeah, I think and I was thinking about shoulders I might do a handstand pushup. That's a pretty, pretty great shoulder developer and something that again more, just like I've got plenty of weighted implements already Not need, want, want to have some body weight implements, Guess where we at. We're at eight now. What have I not hit?

You have not hit calves arms obviously. All the, all the other stuff, yeah, nothing isolation there.

Well, dips and dips and rings, ring muscle. So we're going to build, build the arms. Pretty good Core I haven't really hit. Yeah, I think I like I probably do like a stall bar, hanging leg raise or like a hanging leg raise. I love those and that's great for hip flexor strength as well. So it leaves me with one more thing. Gosh, if I like, look downstairs like what could I not live without?

A salt bike. You do get a amount of a salt bike right.

Yeah that's. I kind of went with the rower of like I don't want to take two, take up two things with the cardio equipment. I don't know there's something I would need to like. I want to have a kettlebell in there somehow, but it's like hard for me to pick, like what's the move with a kettlebell? You know it's. I feel like I should, I should be able to do like a kettlebell complex with like clean and jerk and snatch. I think that would be good.

All encompassing, that's perfect. So, yeah, Smith machine squat which that Smith machine did. That thing is things awesome, especially for bench press as well. Like, if you want to do, a barbell with the incline, that thing's great Dumbbell incline. Bench ring, muscle ups, rowing machine, Nordic hamstring curls, seated cable rows, sandbag, hand string, handstand pushups, stall hanging, leg raise and then a kettlebell circuit.

Yeah.

That's pretty all encompassing. Yeah, any mobility stuff you would want to throw on top of that.

Oh yeah, I'd probably do the couch stretch every day. I would have some type of like thoracic spine mobility movement. But I think if I do all those movements, well, everything else is going to get sorted out. Let's go.

Yeah, mark, anything we haven't talked about today that you think is fundamental or just run on mind lately.

No, we really hammered the those five kind of fundamentals of like what's going to give you the most bang for your buck in 2024. On the topic of the nutrition pieces, I think it's really important that, on top of getting in your protein every day, that people have a big bolus of it for breakfast and for dinner. Those are the two most important places to hit your protein, and I've been challenging people with something I call the 50 gram challenge, which is getting 50 grams of protein before 10 am. So make your breakfast 50 grams of protein and if you really actually try, it's kind of eye-opening to people like how much that actually looks like. But it has a huge. It's a huge benefit to starting your day that way and I think if more people would commit to that that one simple thing they would see dramatic impact. So I think we covered it, but that's another kind of measurable outcome that people could aim for.

Beautiful. You want to leave people with a challenge or something. Based off this episode, I feel like it was very action-oriented. What's that? What's that thing that you think people, after this episode, should go out and do?

Pick one of those five things that we talked about and commit to adding at least one of them to your life for the next 30 days. Beautiful. It's resistance train three days a week, full body I've got the program for you. Persist pump lift three days a week. Got that split. If it's walking track your steps for three days and then try and add about 2,000 steps per day for the next 30 days to whatever your baseline is. If it's protein, eat a gram per pound of body weight every day and try and get 50 grams to start the day. If it's fiber start eating more than 30 grams of fiber each and every day. Try and get it from Whole Foods as best you can. If it's the sleep dial in your consistency for 30 days, whenever you go to bed and whenever you wake up. No missed days, same time. That's it.

I think that's a great way to finish this conversation here. Marcus, thank you so much for doing this today. This was a lot of fun and, like I told you before we hit record, this is an episode that I've been looking forward to doing for a while, so I appreciate you taking time.

I love the way the conversation went and I appreciate you having me. People are always welcome to reach out to me on all the social media platforms, but Instagram is where I engage with most people, so feel free to DM me there at MarcusFilly, and love to connect with new people.