Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 609 - Functional Bodybuilding with Marcus Filly

Episode Date: October 15, 2021

Marcus Filly is the creator of the Functional Bodybuilding training method, and CEO and Founder of Revival Strength. He is a 6x athlete at The Games (2016 12th fittest) and has decades of experience coaching and designing both individual and group training programs for clients worldwide. Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Vuori Performance Apparel: Visit https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order! ➢Magic Spoon Cereal: Visit https://www.magicspoon.com/powerproject to automatically save $5 off a variety pack! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT15 for 15% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

What? Oh, not yet. Not ready. Too late. I, yeah, we got to talk about these accusations against Marcus Philly being on steroids. What's going on with that? Let's talk about it. I searched your name last night. We've known each other for a long time. I've seen a lot of your content. So, you know, I just see all this stuff pop up about, about the juice. And I'm like, this is amazing. I'm like another guy who's like, you know, being accused of taking some shit. He's really lean. I know. Unnaturally lean. And if you're on the rings and you're on the ring dips or something, it looks wild. If you've got a good photographer and it takes the right picture, he makes you look a little bit more unnatural. So when did you start anabolic steroids? See, I go back all the way to, yeah.

12. Yeah. I was like 13. 13, I got out of the house finally i'm actually it's uh probably until i got into crossfit i was so naive to steroids like i played collegiate soccer at berkeley so i was in like in and around like you know uh ncaa you know football players people that i i suppose there were some performance enhancing drugs that were around. I mean, I was, this is what everybody says. I don't even know.

I don't even know what a steroid looks like. I mean, you should see my brother. He's in pretty good shape too. No, my brothers are not, not in the best shape, but yeah, it's just, it's funny. Cause I, I, I really, even through all my CrossFit career, I was like, you know, no people. I don't know anybody. None of my teammates or people I know are doing it. And then eventually start people getting popped. And I'm like, oh, this stuff is actually out here. Wow.

I didn't I didn't even know that. And then I think back to when I was like in high school going to the gym, Gold's Gym in Marin. And I'm like, oh, yeah, the guy that I was really admiring that like had the, you know, abnormally like developed chest and like up by his neck. I was like, how do I get my upper chest to look like that? He might have been doing. He might have been doing some stuff. Yeah. But I didn't know any of that.

And then and then today, you know, I I get the accusations and I'm like, you know, I'm one hundred and eighty pounds. Like, I'm not like I'm not a really big, you know, I stand next to you guys and I'm like, damn, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of small. Um, I just don't, I don't get the concept, you know, I am lean. I'm very lean, um, relative to most people. And even inside my sport and people are like, you can't be that lean and eat as much as you eat. Cause I talk about how many calories I eat a day and I'm like, uh, yeah, you can, if you just do it consistently and you move a lot, you just got to move.

You can't just eat a bunch of food. And I think people, uh, there's some of the pictures I saw was like, yeah, you can if you just do it consistently and you move a lot. You just got to move. You can't just eat a bunch of food and sit around. I think people, there's some of the pictures I saw was like transformation stuff, but they're taking pictures from you like several years ago. Yeah. And I'm like, well, intensity of your workouts get more. And of course, you're going to, I mean, of course, you can be improvement. Sure. Yeah. I have a transformation picture from like when I was 20 to 33 and it's like 13 years.

And I'm like, I'm jacked. I'm like, yeah, I worked out really hard for, you know, a decade. And that happens. What do your calories look like? Right now it's like 3,800 to 4,000 calories a day. And, and, and if I, so I, I do track my macros a bit and I'll eat 3,700 calories like on average. And then I need one or two, like refeed days on top of that a week where I'll probably go. But you're not a normal person. You move around a lot. I do move a lot.

Right. And you've always been that way. Yeah. And if I eat more than I want to move more, like I'm just, I can't, I don't feel good overeating that it always makes me like, I I'm like, I got to burn this off. I got to get moving. So, but I've also talked about it recently where I'm like, it's a, it's a daily thought where I'm like, I got to move because life wants to make you sedentary. Everything about our modern day life is going to get you stuck to the chair, stuck to the commute to whatever and make you reach for things that are not the optimal food choices. So, you know, you got to make the intentional choice each day to move. And I'm thinking about it. Like, how am I going to get some cardio in today?

How am I going to train? There we go. Look at the one on the right. That's when I was 17 years old. Dude, we're going to get you on more plates, more dates. Yeah. Yeah. You're not actually Greg.

Greg, Coach Greg gave me a little shout out recently. And he was like, this guy knows what he's talking about. He didn't talk natty or not with me, but he at least gave me a nod for having good principles of staying lean for the long haul. Yeah. When you said that you were like under, I'll just say under 10% body fat, I'm sure that's where tons of accusations came from. Yeah. Yeah. I had one of my first YouTube videos that went sort of viral and the title was 5% body fat, 3,800 calories a day. How, or something like that, you know, it's total, you know, Nate put it together. It was, it was great. It got a lot of views. Yeah. We're almost, we're almost up to 700,000 views on that. But that was where a lot of people chimed in and were like, no way. This guy's coach Greg, check this guy out. Like, he he jumped in he was like yeah this is legit and i was like who's coach greg right and then

it kind of went from there and so um yeah that was is it fair to say that your calories might be like a thousand calories more than like somebody else that's training just because you have been you it just seems like you've been an active person. You mentioned soccer and since I've known you, you've been doing like CrossFit and all kinds of stuff. So the number might be skewed just because you like to move around a lot. It's like programmed in your head somewhere. Yeah. I mean, I think a few things, I think that you're, you know, our metabolism is this pliable thing. It's like, you know, if you, if you move and you, if you move more consistently for a period of time, it will, it will build up. You know, if you if you move and if you move more consistently for a period of time, it will it will build up. You know, if you obviously maintain more muscle mass, it it elevates and then it stays elevated.

If you eat consistent quality foods that you have to digest, that you have to chew, that are real, that aren't processed, that can also, in my experience, elevate, you know, your metabolism in a sustained way. So it's like you put all those pieces together, which is what I kind of talked about in that video that got a lot of exposure. It's like, you do these things, you do it consistently, your metabolism can elevate and you can eat more and sustain and stay lean. And so, yeah, I mean, I don't, I'm not like you should be on 4,000 calories a day. That's how you're going to get jacked. It's like, well, or ripped, you know, it's it's that's not true for everybody.

But over time, it will build up to that. And I think when I'm in my past, before I got like committed to a career in fitness, I've had my low points where I was like not moving, you know, not committed to training and exercise, eating poorly. And, you know, everything just slows way down. And 2000 calories could make me gain body fat versus now it's like I could eat 4000 calories and, you know, I'm, I'm, it's going to be hard for me to get up to 184, 185 pounds. And let's look at the smaller minute details because yeah, we know that you do CrossFit type workouts, but I mean, during your day, do you sit much? Do you take quite a few walks? Like what does that look like?

Yeah. I mean, I, the, the nature of my work now is that I do sit a lot. I I'm at a desk, um, programming, you know, doing online, uh, writing, writing at my computer. Um, so I'm very much connected to the, to the desk. And so I have to be intentional about that. So I wake up each day at this point and I do 30 minutes of like, you know, relatively high, like moderate to higher intensity cardio or work. Am I tripping or did I see you on a treadmill with like a laptop or something at one point? Yeah, I did. Like outside your house or something, right? Yeah, I've got a I've got a I've got a bike, like a Concept2 biker.

And then my buddy built these desks that just sit right on top of it. So this is the desk that he's talking about being glued to there, by the way. So I try and get in movement that way. During the pandemic, my daughters were home. They weren't in daycare. And so we were going on walks every day. And that was a great way for us to connect. So finding ways to do that.

Winter time is always the hardest for me because it's like the weather gets bad. You're not, it's cold, not wanting to be outside. So finding ways that I can build in like consistent cardiovascular exercise on top of doing the resistance training that I do, you know, five days a week in the gym. How have, uh, electrolytes kind of played into things for you over the last several years? Like, has that been a thing that maybe you wish you knew about when you were doing CrossFit or did you even stumble upon any of that when you were doing some CrossFit stuff? Because we've noticed a huge difference in our own performance, especially because like I tend to do like lower carb, he's kind of lower carb. We don't have the carbohydrates to really, you know, help us

hold more water. And so the electrolytes seem to be really helpful. Yeah. Well, my story with electrolytes is, uh, you know, I think back when I was doing CrossFit, you know, it was like a thought, um, but I was eating really high carbohydrate back then, probably like 600 grams of carbs a day or more just to sustain that type of training in the recovery necessary. Then fast forward to now, it's like, I don't feel as good on that kind of carbohydrate load because I'm not training that intensely. I'm moving a lot, but it's not the intensity that I used to have. So last year, pandemic starts.

I'm like, you know, moving a lot, moderate to low carb. I started playing around with carb cycling and just actually really driving my carbs down, down, down. And Hey, having one refeed day here and there. And I was cramping like crazy. Like I was, I got pretty, I got even leaner then. And, uh, I'd have these like calf just raging cramps at night, you know? And like, it was, it was bad. And, um, you know, they like somebody from like element sent me a free pack and i took and i had like after like a week i was like my cramps were pretty much gone my hydration was way better i was like oh this is great and so then of course i just i was like give me all the the element packs and i started just you know five a day i was having because i was i was perspiring so much

i was having going through so much water and And, um, so it's been, you know, consistent, like everyday thing for me ever since then, for sure. And I'm actually really curious about this too. Did you, cause you said you lowered your carbohydrates, obviously you're doing less work. You got leaner. How do you feel as far as like cravings and your body composition now, do you still eat moderate to low carb currently and higher fat? Yeah.

Right now I'm, I'm like moderate to low carb. I probably most days it's like 200 grams of carbs or less. And that comes from almost entirely from fruits and veggies. So I don't have like big starches, you know? And the only time I feel my cravings kick in is when I'm undernourished from a caloric perspective. That's not like, oh, I didn't have enough carbs. That's why I'm, you know, it's like if I am just under, you know, undercaloried for the day, then I'm like, I need something, and my brain tells me.

I feel that. I feel like you almost feel like a little weak. Yeah. Like you feel like someone stole something from you, a little chunk of your soul, almost like trying to go without coffee. Well, for me, it shows up as like I can't focus. Like I sit down. It's like two o'clock.

This happened yesterday. Like I sat down at around one thirty or two and I had a block of time where I was going to really crank and get some work done. And I was just like, I can't do this right now. Like I'm needing some food. Like and I was like, go to the kitchen, get some food. Like, OK, now I'm going to focus. And I'm like, no, fuck, I'm so hungry. I got to go, you know, like and that's when I'm needing some food. Like, and I was like, go to the kitchen, get some food. Like, okay, now I'm going to focus. And I'm like, no,

fuck, I'm so hungry. I got to go, you know, like, and that's when I'm, I don't keep really bad stuff around the house, but like at that point I'm ready to eat anything that's in sight.

It could be a, you know, a juicy steak or it could be a bread with, you know, butter on it. Like I, I don't, I just need calories.

No, it's a, it's crazy how the body can tell. Real quick, Andrew, you guys just heard Marcus Filly talking about Element and how amazing it is. If you guys haven't tried it, you can get a free Element recharge pack right now by

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Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Again, drinklmnt.com slash powerproject. I like that we're talking about calories and carbs and all this stuff. And one of the things I've learned from watching some of your videos is that you really do a great job of simplifying things.

I don't really hear you talking too sciencey. You just kind of break things down in a simple, very digestible way for a lot of people. What do you think people need to know when it comes to carbohydrates versus fat versus protein? What do you recommend to people normally when somebody is just trying to lose some body fat? Do you think they should try to eliminate a macronutrient or should it be more part of their life or does it depend? Where do you usually start with people? Um, yeah, well, uh, the fact that you notice, I try and keep it as simple as I can. Like that's, I think that goes back to, I had a really like big academic history in the science, health, wellness. I was, you know, molecular cell biology, went to medical school, was really like deep into academia and fell out of love with it because I was like, I don't feel like I'm making any change.

I feel like I'm just studying a bunch of book stuff. And that's not what you actually end up telling people. So I have, I've kind of veered away from that in my coaching career because of an experience I had when I was in my twenties, where it just felt I was disconnected to what matters. So now, yeah, I just want to like, what are real practical things you can do? Let's talk about that. Let's not talk about how carbohydrates are broken down in the small intestine and what kind of, you know, hormonal signals, like people don't necessarily really need to hear that. They need to hear, what do I do?

And I, I'm really big on like, if I'm going to focus on a macronutrient with somebody, it's always protein first. It's, you know, I would say the average person is looking to lose weight or be healthier, just hasn't really ever eaten even a moderately high protein diet. Like they don't, they don't even, they're just low protein and they don't know that by consuming more protein from good sources that they could have more energy, that they can feel way more satiated and they'll have some mental focus and clarity. They won't have, you know, big energy, mental acuity spikes and dips.

And so that's, that's the place I would start. And then I'm not really a fan of like cutting out a macronutrient for people because when they look at a plate of food, they have a sense of like, well, this look, this is what is normal. And when you remove a macronutrient, plates of food stop looking normal. They don't look like the standard diet, you know, uh, they start looking weird. And people are like, have some form of a plate of food, like an actual entree, like an actual dinner, like an actual, uh, and Seema says meals at meals, you know, rather than like snacks. Yeah.

And I, and I think that that's really great for people. And I think that that's something that people should focus in on more is like, if you can just have three or four meals a day, you'll probably be doing great. Like a protein source, maybe a starch. If you want the carbohydrate, sounds fine to me. That's fine. Maybe, maybe a vegetable.

You got the three things there. And that sounds like a meal to me. Yeah. I mean, what cracks me up is like, someone's like, so is having five or six meals a day? Should I have seven meals a day? I'm like, when was the last time you just had breakfast, lunch, and dinner and they were well-rounded? Let's just go back to the basics. So basics, yeah, again, are just like slap a piece of protein on your plate and then build a meal around it. And the way we build a meal isn't about like get your macros. It's like just put real food

on the plate. And what's real? If people, if people eat real food, whole foods, then that's that are not processed. It's going to be hard for them to get a huge whack of carbs. They're going to end up with something that's like moderate to slow digesting. They're going to have vegetables or piece of fruit like no one's getting obese from eating a bunch of bananas like that's not happening. They're getting, you know, obese from or overweight from eating, from drinking, you know, big goals. Right. So it's like, okay, a real plate of food is yeah. Have your potato. That's fine. Cook it though. Cook it yourself. Don't buy like French fries from the, from the fast food. And then you want a piece, you want some protein, you want a steak. Okay. Come find cook a steak. That's fine too. And then throw some, you know, throw some

vegetables, throw something that's like produce in the produce section on there and you're good to go. And if people did that three meals a day, man, that will fix everything. Whether they have rice on their plate or they don't, it doesn't matter. It's not about removing a whole carbohydrate or a whole macronutrient. It's just about real food with protein as the center of it. And I think you're going to feel and look way different in a positive way. And what's your suggestion to people who are like, you know, you tell them just eat meals, which conceptually is very simple and it's easy to do, but then they're like, I'm really having cravings for this, for that. Or let's say that they're having a problem fighting

off hunger for some reason. You know what I mean? So how do you help people with that? Well, this goes back to what I was, we were saying about cravings that I was having. It's like, this is a matter of under eating. And unfortunately, diet culture has everybody, you know, for the most part, believing that less is more. If I just under eat, then I'll lose the weight. And of course, like to lose weight, there's a thermodynamic principle where it's like you have to burn more than you consume.

And so we need to arrive at that at some point. But if people approach it with like less is more, less is more, then they're constantly trying to under eat. You need to arrive at it, but you don't need to start there because if they just switch the choices of foods, they will eat less anyway. Yes. And that was why I think paleo was so powerful for people early on. I was like, don't worry about the amount, just eat the right types of food and just eat whatever makes you feel full. And that worked for a lot of people.

Of course, it didn't work for everybody because then people started to hack the system. Like, oh, well, if I just do this, that's paleo. It's like, yeah, but you're now not eating real food. You're eating a jar of, you know, peanut butter or paleo cupcake. I'm like, that's, there's nothing paleo about that. So, uh, I, for people that are struggling with hunger or struggling people that like with cravings, it's like, eat more, eat more, eat bigger plates, eat bigger meals, you know, have the biggest meal of your day be breakfast. I know, you know, we'll get into maybe talking about fasting, intermittent fasting and what that looks like for some people. But again, that I don't that doesn't have to be the place to start. Start your day with enough food. You're like, I'm not thinking about food until like the afternoon because I got all the right stuff in early. under eat in the morning when, you know, I'm tired in the afternoon. I've done a lot of working out.

I've done a lot of thinking and kid, you know, kid wrangling and, you know, it's six o'clock and fuck, I didn't eat enough earlier. Yeah. I want to eat everything on my kid's plate. And I want to go have that, you know, those four slices of bread that they didn't touch it earlier. And like, I want to have all that. Cause I just, I messed up early on in the day and I didn't eat enough. It'll catch up to you eventually, whether you are underfed or if you're like underslept. Yes. And then underfeeding is kind of a weird principle because I think that maybe people don't really have the concept down, but you hit the nail on the head by saying you'd like to start with protein. Yeah. you hit the nail on the head by saying you'd like to start with protein. Yeah.

I think most people are walking around underfed all the time because they don't have the, really the protein requirement that they, your body kind of, and your body kind of needs it every day. We don't really store protein. Yeah. And so when you're not hitting those requirements, it's very easy to become hungry. Every time that you, every time that you pass through some of those foods, you start to digest them, you're going to be very hungry and you're going to be craving, there's going to be very hungry. And you're going to be craving, there's so many delicious foods out there,

you're going to be craving those things, those are the things that you're used to. And so I think that, you know, over time, people just need to kind of understand you need sleep, you need rest, you need good amounts of nutrition every day, and protein is going to be a key factor at just trying to keep that hunger at bay, just trying to calm that son of a bitch down a little bit.

Totally, yeah. And I like what you're saying by starting the day with a big meal. And then if you eat more, then you're going to have energy and you're going to want to move more. If you eat less, your body's going to recognize like, oh, I'm kind of starving. I'm in starvation mode. Let's lower your drive to do things because we want to conserve. And so people start to move less and they eat less. They move less.

It happens even with animals. Yeah. They'll want to move around less. The more scarce the food is, the less they move around. Yeah. Yeah. It's famine time. Don't go out and run.

Don't go for 20,000 steps today. You didn't eat anything. Just sit on the couch. The thing that, um, I think people are missing now. Like I hear this a lot. It's like, I'm, I'm gaining body fat because I'm under, I'm under eating. And this is like, here's how the, and I want to break this concept down because it's, you know, for people that are in the fitness industry, you're like, that's absurd. Like you don't, you know, you don't like gain mass by under fueling. Like it doesn't work with physics, but when people under eat over time, they start to lower their activity level.

And then biology starts to win. Biology is like, Hey, you're hungry, go eat something. And then the net is that they go and binge. They go eat, overeat, and they're under eating five days a week, but two days a week, they're way overeating. Plus they're not moving because they're not very energetic. And the net result is they are in a caloric surplus and they gain fat and they think, man, my metabolism must be messed up because I starve myself every day and I'm gaining weight. It's like, no, you starve yourself 90% of days and

those other 10% you massively overeat plus you're not moving. So this concept of eating more can result in you losing body fat is like what it means for somebody who under eats by 500 calories a day. It means eat about 400 calories, more 500 calories, more just get to maintenance. You'll reduce cravings. You'll not have those binge days. You might have a cheat meal, but you won't have a cheat weekend. And you'll actually have the energy to go for a walk or lift some weights. And after a month, two months, three months of doing that, your body looks better. And after a month, two months, three months of doing that, your body looks better. And you're like, whoa, I ate more and I look better. It's like, because it's not about what you happen today. It's about what happens over the course

of the next year, two years, three years. And if you eat a little bit more, you're going to set yourself up for fewer mistakes or fewer roadblocks and obstacles or falling off the wagon of the longevity game and nutrition movement, you know, training. He just said that way better than us. We've been saying that for a long time, but not like that. I like you. He did a better job. It was beautifully put. But, you know, a big thing is like just making sure and trying to set up intentional movement during your day, because a of people you know if you work at a desk job get a desk riser um or stand at your desk like neither both of us we barely ever sit because like i found the times that i did sit years ago when i'd have to get up to go work out later on in my day i wouldn't feel like my hips wouldn't feel good everything would feel kind of

i'd have to warm up a lot but when i start setting up intentional movement i'm going to get this amount of steps i'm going to make sure that I'm not sitting at my desk. Everything is easier. Even when I'm at a caloric deficit, I'm still used to moving. And when you get used to movement, it makes a big difference. Even when you're in a deficit, biology doesn't necessarily have a, have a hand there. Most of the time. I couldn't agree more. And I make, you know, I set up when I, when I used to work one-to-one with clients and how i look at my own day is set myself up for the most like the highest probability of success of movement for somebody that means moving first thing when they wake up you're like oh is morning cardio the best is it

fasted cardio the best i'm like no it's best whenever you're gonna do it i know for me if i wake up and i can get some cardio in right away, that's a win. Cause I don't want to do cardio at two in the afternoon. I just, my body's not in that kind of mood and weight training. It's like, yeah, like as soon as I dropped my kids at, you know, daycare preschool, it's nine o'clock. I come home. I'm probably at a good place to do some work right now, but I got to get my weight training in. Just give me an hour. Let me go crank that. And then I check that box. I'm going to eat better the rest of the day. And now I can focus on work and not be like stressed about like, how am I going to get my movement in?

So that's, you got to figure out how, what works best for you to be intentional about moving every day. And that there we're doing, you know, for our members of our program, we're doing a cardio challenge right now, 30 minutes a day for 30 days every day. And it could look like, you know, for our members of our program, we're doing a cardio challenge right now, 30 minutes a day for 30 days every day. And it could look like, you know, in the gym on the rower and the bike doing intervals. It could look like going for a walk, but just do 30 minutes a day. And I'd started it 97 days ago. So I'm 97 days in for myself, and I haven't missed a day yet. And I do it at 6 a.m.

You know, I wake up sauna, cold plunge, cardio. That was this. And I was like, Hey, I'm going to do this. I'm not going to make it crazy hard. I'm not going to go, you know, try and set a PR. I'm not rowing 2K time trial intervals. I'm just going to move for 30 minutes and I'm going to set up a couple different, you know, variations to keep it interesting, but get that intentional movement to start the day. And it's really made, you know, big impact. And I kind of thought, okay, those days of me doing double sessions, like where I get cardio and then weight train later over. Cause I got kids now I'm busy. I'm like, you know what? I can, I can carve out 30 minutes to do this on top of what my normal routine looks like.

And I'm encouraging a lot of people to join in on that and just, Hey, feel what that's like to, to create that. And if I miss my weight training session in the afternoon or later in the day, no biggie. Like I moved for 30 minutes. I got good quality movement in to start my day. And that I think is super powerful. I think it's the key word. There is a routine, you know, it's now part of your lifestyle and hopefully other people can invest in working towards that. It's not easy in the beginning. It's very difficult in beginning to even just get yourself to a gym at all or to get yourself to do a workout can be difficult. You know, you're doing hot, you're in the sauna, you're doing the cold plunges and your whole day is kind of centered around these habits. Yeah. They become as common as just your regular daily hygiene that we all practice.

Exactly. Yeah. And it just starts with, you know, pick your pick your one thing that's going to work for you. That's going to be your commitment to your health and fitness every day. And then only add the second piece once that becomes so routine and habitual. And you, you know, any, anybody that's like, Hey, add these 20 things to your life today. And we're going to be, you know, we're going to be good. It's like, well, it's too many, too many things. How do we keep it super simple? When did you, before we did the workout today with you, you mentioned that like nowadays you're working out and you like to feel good afterwards. You were mentioning that to me simple. When did you, before we did the workout today with you, you mentioned that like nowadays you're working out and you like to feel good afterwards. You were mentioning that to me now,

but you've come from a CrossFit background where you guys are doing some, you just, just satanic type of workouts and you're dead afterwards. Um, but when did you get to the place where you're like, I'm going to work out and afterwards I can still go do the other things I need to do. I don't need to lie down for an hour. Yeah. Well, that was sort of why I depart my departure from CrossFit as a, as an athlete. That's why it happened was that my life had sort of, it started to get a little bit more adult, you know, I was like, okay, now I've, now I've got this career, uh, business, you know, I'm just got married. We are, we bought a a house. We got a baby on the way. Okay. I know what it takes to be the best for myself at the sport. I know how it feels afterwards.

My life from 23 to 28, 29 was well-suited for that. I could just go smash my face against a brick wall and, you know, call it burpees, whatever you want to call it. And then just sort of stumble into coaching a group class. I'm like, okay guys, go grab the thing, you know, whatever, grab PVC pipe, you know, like over there, like vomiting. I was, I was a good group class coach, but there were definitely days where I kind of phoned it in because I was so smashed from my training. Um, but yeah, when I was 30 and I just wrapped up my sixth CrossFit games and staring at like, what's it going to take to do this again with a job? I mean, with the business, with the, the, the new house, with the baby coming, I'm like, yeah, I just, I just don't, I can't do it. I can't do it really well and do these other things that are starting to mean

a lot to me. Plus it, and it wasn't like I sat down rationally. I was like, Hmm, is this going to, how's this going to work? It was more like,

ah, I'm scared to do that anymore. Like that hurts too much. And there's young people coming through that don't give a fuck. Yeah. They don't care about business. They don't care about their girlfriend. They don't give a shit about anything. They just want to be the the best and you watch them and you hear them and you're like oh i don't sound like that anymore i don't talk that way i don't do

the man i don't do those little things anymore yeah i better i better get my ass out of the way well that that was a big part of it i was was just seeing the caliber of athlete coming through who had no strings attached, like living on mom's couch, don't have a single bill to pay, don't give a shit. And they are maniacs. They train all day. And I'm like, that's not me. And they're getting better quickly. And I'm like, right now I'm considered quite good. And I had a good run.

You're like, keep that 400-pound clean, bro. Just keep going. I'm out of here. Yeah, I see the 18-year-olds that are like outlifting my all-time PRs. And I'm like, yeah, I got out at a good time. Ooh, really? Oh, my gosh. It's insane.

Oh, the CrossFit kids movement, the teenagers and stuff coming through were just – I mean, they still are. They're crushing it. The teenagers and stuff coming through were just, I mean, they're still crushing it. Yeah, they have just this insane capacity to, like, they were so resilient at those ages, or a few of them are. You know, and CrossFit as a sport has long been put everybody in, raise the intensity of training, more training, more lifting, more everything. The most resilient survive. Everyone else gets, get everyone else gets injured. It's,

it's, it is that. And those, you know, genetic freaks or the, the, the few that actually survive are doing things that we have never seen before from human performance standpoint,

all mixed together. And you saw 20 year old snatch 300 pounds, you know, and be able to run a five minute mile, like in the same, like, and they're not even, they're like 19. I'm like, okay, this is the different world. You know, it's a different world. And it's, it's, that's why I so love the sport. I think it's amazing for what we see come out of it. It's inspiring. We were talking about this. These are inspiring individuals. Wow. That's amazing. But I shouldn't be doing that. I should do this variation of those methodologies and those principles, which is kind of what functional bodybuilding is for me is like, you, you want

to do those things. We can, we can show you how to do it in a way that's not going to blow your lid off, make you not be able to focus on your kids or focus at your work or, you know, and then when people are doing too much intensity, then they get into the, the whole carb craving, sugar craving, and it blows their diet out of the water because they, they push too hard. And then they like left the gym and they're like, I just did the hardest workout of my life. I'm going to go have five donuts. I need to have those right now. That's what's going to make me feel better.

And I like that a lot because a lot of people that are listening, some do compete. Um, but a lot, like they got other things that are just so much more important, but they want to reach like a high level of looking good, right? They want to like, they want to be kind of lean, et cetera. And they think that they have to kill themselves in the gym to do that. When frankly they don't. They can leave every training session getting a good one in not spending an hour and a half in the gym. Go and do everything else you need to do. But the workouts don't need to kill you. And that's why like you look the way you do, but your workouts aren't thrashing you every day. And that's super impressive. And I also think on top of that, yeah, people want to like, they want to look, they want to look a bit better. But I think once you get a taste of like training, you also, you see the weight go up a little

bit on the bar. You're like, oh, that's kind of fun. I like being stronger, you know? So how can we present training in the context of like, you don't need to kill yourself because here, instead of we have three things that we're trying to get stronger at. No, no, we have a hundred things we're trying to get stronger at, no, no, we have a hundred things we're going to try and get better at. This was what really drew me to CrossFit early on was because I always was in search of being better.

Oh, give me a hundred things to get better at. Well, I got to diversify my attention. I can spend some time over here. I can spend some time over here. And that I think is much better for the longevity piece because someone's like, you know, this week I'm going to work on my kettlebell swings and this week I'm going to work on this. And they're not pushing that maximum every week of the same exact thing to hard effort across a broad spectrum of things. And that, again, will keep them going for a long time. That's one of the major appeals of CrossFit is that it's not, you know, powerlifting is so like singularly focused. And if somebody is of the mind of, yeah, that's kind of cool to get stronger on a squat, but I don't want to gain weight or I don't want to look fat or I don't want to, as soon as they start to say those follow-up

things, it's like, well, you might not be committed to the whole program because that's part of power lifting is to try to move the most amount of weight possible. And sometimes it may require for you to go up a weight class. It might require you to go through all kinds of things in your training, like because your main focus is bench, squat, deadlift. You could tear a muscle. You can get hurt because you're brushing up against what your body's capable of in those particular things. And yes, you could train smarter and figure out ways around some of those things. But in general, you're going to get fucked up. You're going to get injured in some fashion. And you saw that with CrossFit, too, when people started to get so focused on the times and they started to kind of race against the clock.

I think we all can agree CrossFit's amazing. People being able to climb a rope and be able to do a heavy deadlift and be able to do – there's a lot of Westside barbell stuff incorporated into CrossFit. I mean, I think we can all agree, like a lot of amazing things about it. Yeah. But it's like with anything where you're trying to push something to world-class or any sport where it's competitive, you know, to get more points, you got to do more things. You got to do it harder. You got to do it faster.

You got to do it heavy, like everything. And that's fine for sports, but for an approach to fitness and longevity and health and wellness and looking good, you know, when the, when the, when the times or the weights become such the focus, people lose perspective on like, is this even making me like a happier person? Is this making me a healthier person? Is this making me look better? It's like, you know, Hey, like a post on my, I got a faster time on my workout. It's like, okay, cool. But like, are you, are you happy? Or like, are you, do you look the way you want to look?

Are you energetic? Do you have good sex drive? Like, do you have all the things that you showed up at the gym in the first place for? What did you came? Hey, I'm here to lose some weight. I want to have better energy. Two years later, dude, did you see my time? I got my, my weights went up. I'm like, oh, cool. But you're tired. You don't have good sex drive and you, you still look the same. Like, why is that? Okay. Like you

got distracted by the, the, the metrics and not about how this makes you actually feel and look and perform in life. Do you think CrossFit for the most part has fixed the resilience aspect of things? Because like, you know, the, the idea when we were looking at CrossFit years ago and there's always memes about like CrossFitters when they're training, their forms kind of messed up because of the time aspect of things and they're trying to do things fast. Right. But do you think in general, like that's been kind of modified and changed and you don't see as many things and they're trying to do things fast. Right. Um, but do you think in general, like

that's been kind of modified and changed and you don't see as many injuries or is that still a big problem within that sport? Um, well, I like to be really careful to differentiate between CrossFit as a sport and then CrossFit as the, like a methodology for, for general population. And I also like to be careful to say like, look, I'm not affiliated with the brand or the company anymore. You know, I used to own a CrossFit gym. I don't anymore. I used to compete in the sport of CrossFit. I don't compete anymore.

I still know many people. I still follow the sport. And I still connect with coaches that are in the industry or under the brand of CrossFit. connect with coaches that are in the industry of, or the, under the brand of CrossFit. Um, and of course I saw some of the, I was an early adopter and I was a very proud participant in the early years of the culture of CrossFit, despite the shortcomings and despite the mistakes that we made, you know, people getting injured, people getting too much intensity, maybe trying to fast track something that, you know, shouldn't be fast track, right? You shouldn't fast track somebody to snatch, maybe, you know, with that said, in an effort to be kind of in on that leading edge of that community, learned a tremendous amount, a lot of things that gave a ton of value to people when it was done well it was beautiful when it was done poorly and poorly just means somebody who didn't have experience coaching it then it was it could have it was

disastrous in some cases or it was really bad for some people so the the limiting factor was experience we're almost 15 years i don't know 15 years from from when the first CrossFit affiliates opened up. So 2007 was the first CrossFit Games. 2022 is right around the corner. So we're 15 years later. It's been a lot of coaching, a lot of hours, over a decade of the sport, almost two decades of the methodology and when the website was launched. almost two decades of the methodology and when the website was launched, lots of education,

lots of subject matter experts coming in and helping the CrossFit community, coaches, athletes, learn better movement mechanics, learn better things, made a lot of mistakes, seen all the problems with trying to do this. You look at a standard CrossFit gym now, what the programming looks like, it's highly elevated. There's a lot of CrossFit gyms that use things that I put out, functional bodybuilding, as their group fitness delivery because it's the same movements. We got burpees, but we got dumbbell floor presses too. We got chin-ups, and we're also doing sumo deadlifts at tempo. you know sumo sumo deadlifts at tempo and so i think a lot of things have just continued to every you know every you you keep messing people up that's not a good business move right people want to stay in business people want to help people and over time it's just continue to get

better and it will continue to get better and and the ownership of crossfit has changed hands recently you know there's there's they's still driven to make a profit. There's still driven to drive the sport, to do all the things that help grow a business. But I think at the underlying principle is like we got to help people. And if the more people we help, the more the business grows. Because when people were getting hurt, that didn't help the business. It drove people out of the gym. So I think there's

a lot of things that are getting better. I think that there's fewer and fewer people that are just like, Hey, you know, I got a good idea. Let's open up a gym and let's just, you know, throw people through a crazy workout of burpees and kettlebell swings and jumping on boxes and cracking their shins open. Like it's happening much less because those facilities and those coaches just, they can't survive in the current fitness climate. They just don't like people are like, I see through that. There's too many options out there. Now you got CrossFit, you got a F50, what's it called? F45. You know, you've got these different Barry's bootcamps. You've got all these options for people to do functional training with some intensity. And everybody's like, we got to keep people safe and having fun and making progress.

So it just helps everybody raise their, their abilities and the quality of what's out there. It's not perfect by any means, but it's getting better. Why, uh, why bodybuilding like functional bodybuilding? Like, uh, I think the term bodybuilding, you know, it's just been around for a long time. And now there's like obviously there's a sport of bodybuilding. But in your context, I don't think you're really referring to the sport of bodybuilding. I think you're talking about utilizing some movements that will help build the body. Yeah.

But that are movements that can be maybe beneficial to your day-to-day type thing. Sure. Yeah. Well, this is where the blending of functional and bodybuilding come together and what you just said at the end. But breaking them apart, from when I was 13 and going to the gym, like I started going to Gold's Gym and I was just doing bodybuilding routines.

to the gym, like I started going to Gold's gym and I was just doing bodybuilding routines. And when I talk about bodybuilding, it was like, the goal was to use resistance to alter your muscle mass, your, to grow muscle. Why did you do that? Were you just trying to get, you were like scrawny, you're skinny. You're like, I don't need to be bigger. I was stronger for soccer. It was, it was interesting. Cause at the time I just liked, I just liked moving.

I liked doing like, I was with my brother, like 10 years old and like, you know, we had a little thing in the garage and it was like, Oh, can I do a pull up on this? I was like trying to figure out ways to do this stuff. I don't know where I got that from, but I just, I kind of liked doing the pushups and I think I wanted to get muscle not because I was scrawny. I was like an athletic guy, but I just thought it looked cool to have muscles. So I wanted to go to the gym and my brother wanted to go to the gym and I wanted to hang out with him.

And that was cool. So he got his license, you know, at 16, I was 14 and we were driving to gold's gym. And that was perfect. We just follow the machines description. There's the picture. Okay. This is a check. Okay.

We'll do chest. I'll do all the chest, right? Bodybuilding to me or those routines were all about what can I do to, to affect the size, the shape, the look. And it was never about function. Like you get a little stronger, which is a functional trait, but I wasn't trying to like move well. I could, I didn't think about technique. I didn't think about technique until I maybe had my first shoulder pain doing bench press. I'm like, am I doing this right? I was just doing following the machine. That's the technique. So bodybuilding for years was just about muscle contraction to change something aesthetically about myself. There's a lot of strength elements

involved in that, but that was what it meant to me but i put 10 years of that in and i showed up to my first crossfit workout and guess what i was pretty good at it you know i could i could do the thrusters and the kipping pull-ups and i almost got a muscle up on my first day and not because i had done crossfit and functional training because i had done the reps i had built a base of muscle mass. And I always, you know, I did a lot of machine stuff, but I also got kind of introduced to Charles Pollackin as a strength coach and a bodybuilding coach early on. And some of his methods and his programs were like strict chin-ups, split squats, you know, heels elevated front

squats, you know, movements that were like big ranges of motion. So I'm doing bodybuilding with big range of motion. So I have that in my background. And then of course the big CrossFit era, which was very functional, it was very performance based. And at the end of it all, I'm like, Hey, there's this happy medium between the two move to move better and to move like with more power and move

to develop muscles and to focus on how to control our bodies and to change our aesthetic and i think people like this and people who like this think that this looks somewhat appealing how do i make that bridge that gap and then people in the functional fitness world the crossfit world were like i kind of want to keep doing curls. It's like, yes, you can. And so how do we bring those together? And that was where this this mindset around functional bodybuilding just made sense to me. It was like I they both have value and they don't belong in different parts of the gym. They belong in the same part of the gym.

I want people to like really pay attention to kind of what what you mentioned there, because there's a theme that like has happened with a lot of episodes on this podcast when we've had people on Andre Milano came on and his advice to lifters was the first few years, two to three years of your lifting build up volume. Okay. So do a lot of high rep work in the gym, build muscle, build your training volume,

doing bodybuilding type movements. When you look at a lot of the top power lifters in the game, a lot of them started with bodybuilding when they were younger. And then once they transferred to powerlifting, boom, for some reason they got strong fast. You had a base of bodybuilding. You move into CrossFit, your body's resilient. You're able to perform really well and adapt quickly. There's a lot there in building resilience in your body with bodybuilding before you start getting into a lot of these other sports.

Right. before you start getting into a lot of these other sports. Right. Well, some of these other sports, and when you start to perform in them, they're going to put a tremendous amount of load on connective tissues. And if you've done the bodybuilding work and you put in those thousands of reps and the volume, it takes time for your ligaments and tendons to build strength. You can build a lot of muscle mass quickly, but they're not going to catch up for five, 10 years. So you put in that, that volume of training. Now your, your ligaments and tendons are ready to handle the force production required for

an Olympic lift in CrossFit when you're breathing heavy and you've just done toes to bar. So that's part of it. Yeah. One of my, my early mentors, James Fitzgerald, who I know you guys had up here, you know, he said, uh, I remember he said like, well, what's the best, somebody asked him like, what's the best way to, you know, be good at CrossFit? Cause he was the first champion ever. And he's like, yeah, yeah. Do bodybuilding for 10 years. And people were like, no, that's wrong. It's like, no, no, it's kind of right. You know? Um, so I, I believe in that a lot. And then the other thing about bodybuilding is that there's a, my muscle connection, you know, Arnold talked about it. It's like learning how to actually control your muscles with your brain, like, you know, motor control.

You just learn it. And I learned it through bodybuilding reps, but I also learned it through flexing in the mirror. You know, I'm like a teenager. I'm like, you know, I'm like, how do you, how do I flex those upper back muscles? It's like, I just, I learned how to basically, you know, flex my rhomboids or most people are like, what's a rhomboid. They have no idea. So you're like, okay, let's go do this exercise. Let's go do a pull-up. Let's get your upper back. Let's get your shoulders to depress before you pull with your arms. They're like, what are you talking

about? It's like, I'm like, I get that. I know how to move those things. Cause I was trying to do a rear, you know, double bicep and figure out how to make it look cool in the mirror. So there's such beauty in taking pieces of that world. Be like, oh, that's how it makes people actually understand their bodies better. It's not just about being vain and looking good in the mirror and posing in trunks on the stage. It's about, I learned how to flex these muscles and that's valuable when you want to move for the rest of your life. Bodybuilding is amazing, uh, for, you know, being a type of sport that you can, uh, participate in forever. Um, you know, when will your luck run out with three sets of 10 on something like it just the intensity can change over the years, you know, from the time you're, you know, 30 to the time you're 50 to the time you're 70. You can make adjustments in whatever ways you need to along the way. It doesn't have to always look the same way as you were pointing out, like going from machine to machine.

And you probably did like 20 sets for a body part and things like that. It'll be moments where maybe you want to lean into stuff like that more. And it might be moments where you're like, I just need, you know, two exercises per body part or something like that. But bodybuilding is fantastic. You can, that's kind of where I think just about everyone who started was with just your typical, whether it be like they were really trying to like bodybuild or whether they started with just randomly three sets of 10, whether they knew it or not, or whether they were intentional or not, they pretty much started with some sort of bodybuilding protocol. Sure. And it's almost impossible. You know, there's always probability of like getting hurt when it comes to anything in the gym, but following these kind of, uh, bodybuilding principles, as long as you're not, you know, trying to lift the most amount of weight

or you start to do the exercises too often or something like that, it's, it's difficult to, to get hurt unless you're going to that kind of, uh, you know, real high level, but you're going to see a lot of injuries when you're talking about powerlifting, when you're talking about, uh, Olympic lifting. Um, but again, even with powerlifting, you can powerlift forever. You can powerlift from the time you're 10 until the time you're 90. But there's a requirement of you not going too far. Yeah. And I think that that's the tendency. With bodybuilding, people typically don't go too far because the rep range is usually somewhere appropriate between 8 to 12 reps where your intensity is going to be lower.

Yeah. So many things just came to mind as you were saying all that. Um, I think one is, you know, with bodybuilding, one of the challenges that people do run into is that if they're not really creative or they don't really have a good handle on the training concepts, they do get bored. They're like, ah, it's like the same three sets of 10, you know, like it's leg day again, it's bicep day. You know, there's a, the boredom factor that, that hits a lot of people. Um, you know, it's a, it's a rare person that's like, I've hit the same bodybuilding routine for the last 30 years and I'm just, I love it. I'm getting after it. training adds in an element of variety to these concepts. And that's again, where the blend for me was so powerful. It's like, cool, we're going to keep doing these things at work that can work for decades, but you're bored of it. So then I'm sorry, I'd stop working. You know, you can't,

you're not going to be consistent with something you hate and you're bored of. So let's bring in some things that are nuanced, different, fun, variety, get you trying to learn a new skill. The other thing is that I think people in the gym doing bodybuilding routines that don't have a good movement, uh, like, you know, history, um, they don't have good awareness of their bodies. If they're just hitting machines and they've never really learned how to move their bodies in a free weight setting or something like that. Um, that's where I think those people end up getting injured. You know, they end up getting put in positions that

maybe aren't really mechanically sound for them. And they do thousands of reps and like, ah, I can't, I can't bench press or I can't hit the chest press machine anymore because of my, this is bothering me. And they're not pushing like maximum weights. They're just been in cockeyed positions for three years and it catches up to them. So I like that as a, you know, a principle to teach people. It's like we did all that slow tempo work today. Hey, let me teach you how to move by really slowing things down and getting you to connect with good positions. And then now it's like, we just did a big, uh, a big redesign

of our gym back in San Rafael. He used to look like very traditional functional, you know, training gym. Now it's like a hybrid. It's got, we got a bunch of Atlantis strength machines in there. I've got, you know, the, the Smith machine, I've got several leg, you know, curl leg extension cable machines. And I'm like, yeah, we're blending these together because I can get onto those machines that might put me into a fixed position, but I have great awareness of my body. I know how to move because I've learned how to do it in both settings. And that's only now going to enhance my, my ability to contract muscles, to body build, to get a good stimulus, to keep me engaged for a long time. And it's not going to set me up for injury because I know how to move and I've continued to try and explore good movement on top of getting a good pump.

idea of always increasing your intensity, especially when you do things with the functional bodybuilding in mind, because, you know, for example, we're doing this Philly Zurcher press, right? Um, yeah, to keep the, to keep your scapular position here and you have to be pressing right here. You're not going to continuously just be increasing that load. If you're now controlling your tempo and a lot of people, when they're like, Oh God, I only have, I can only use 30 or 35 pounds here. I'm usually Arnold pressing fifties. That can be an ego blow for some people, even though they're getting a lot of good work there and a lot of other large range of motion movements. But if you can slowly work on regressing, taking that load down and slowly progress

that over time, your movement's going to be so much better in general and life. Yeah. I think, I think, well, absolutely. And I, you know, you mentioned the ego piece and that's always going to be a challenge for a certain type of individual. I actually don't believe it's like the, the majority of people, I think most people come into training with like no ego. They're like, I don't, you know, it's like, you got to tell them like, Oh, you can go up another five pounds. Like, it's okay. Um, there's always going to be somebody that's like, you know, I gotta be lifting the most. And that's where some of these principles that we talked about today help, right? It's like tempo, you know, awkward grips, deficits, different positions. It's like, it's going to self limit, you know, here. Oh, you want to lift 300 pounds? Sorry. Like your grip's going to give out after the third rep and you're safe. You know, you can't, you can't grind out your 10th rep, you know, when your grip fails on the fat grip. Um, but yeah, I think that in finding ways to empower the person that's in, that's intimidated is really like, that's, that's the way, if you can figure out that for the masses, you know, how do we get people to come in and actually try and lift the weights

and that going back to the CrossFit thing, that's why I jumped on that so heavily early on was, you know, I've been lifting weights for 10 years before CrossFit was even in my, in anybody's sphere of awareness. Nobody was racing to the, there weren't hordes of people running to the gym to power lift or to bodybuild. It was kind of, you were a fringy type of person. Now everyone was banging, like, sign me up to do cleans, sign me up to do the swings. And I was like, whoa, like everybody suddenly wants to come and learn how to lift weights. Like, and they're kind of inspired to go and lift heavier. I'm like, this is cool.

I want to be in this, this mode as a coach, who's trying to make a career in health and fitness. I want to be on the front lines with average everyday person coming in and saying, yeah, I heard this is cool. Uh, I hear you like lift weights. Like I want to do that. I'm like, awesome. I've been trying to get people to come to the gym with me for the last 10 years and nobody wanted to come. Right. Yeah. I think that, you know, for a long time, all that anyone knew was bodybuilding. Yeah. And then all that anyone knew was like the real high level bodybuilding. And maybe people just didn't understand the empowerment that can go on from lifting weights until they had the vehicle of like CrossFit to kind of drive that message home where they're like, oh, okay. It's

you're climbing ropes too and you're doing cleans and you're doing all these other movements and it just kind of looks cool and then to see the bodies that came out of there with both the men and the females you know people started looking uh awesome and on top of that there wasn't the diet component to it as much or you didn't see it as much it wasn't like people trying to like not eat and work out. Sure. It's like people were getting, people were gaining muscle mass and they were getting stronger. And I think that became something that kind of swept, at least in this country, it gained

some ground and then it started kind of spreading all over the place. Yeah. I mean, I think there were two ways to look at it. It was like, you might've been in the camp of like being a little bit bitter about it. Like, Hey, I've been trying to get people to do this for the last 10 years and I wasn't successful. And now this random, you know, group of people comes out doing crazy burpees and stuff. And now everyone wants to like pay attention to it or could be like, great.

Finally, people are showing up. Let's go talk about it. Let's go do it. Let's see. And let's do it better. You know, I had plenty of people that were telling me like, Hey man, that's dangerous. You shouldn't do that. Like you shouldn't coach people like that. I'm like, okay, but at least I'm, we have a chance to coach them. So yeah, it's not perfect, but let's make it better. And that's kind of, that's

gotta be the driving, you know, if you're really into like making change for people, helping them that that's, I believe that should be the attitude forever if you're in this industry. It's like you got people coming. That's a good thing. Now do better each time by them, right? Make it more effective for them. Make it safer for them. Make it something that they can do for 10, 20, 30 years.

Make it accessible, more accessible, functional bodybuilding, more accessible. Anytime I see something that creates an obstacle to somebody doing it more, I got to fix it, you know, and an injury that creates an obstacle for people, you know, uh, doing too much intensity so that they can't show up for their kids and, you know, be focused at their job. That's an obstacle, you know, and then, oh, this, we didn't even talk about diet. Now people are not seeing the results that they want that's an obstacle we got to talk about that so you just keep leveling up leveling up with more and more experience and you realize that it really just is about keeping it super

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Head over there right now. You had some different ways of changing the intensity of our workout today. Once we got to like a certain weight and once we were like warmed up, we just kept the weight the whole time. And I think that people, maybe some

folks that just haven't got into strength training much they don't really understand this principle like the weight is just one variable the weight is just one variable of intensity but there's so many other things you can do you mentioned the the different grips you mentioned the tempo you mentioned charles pullquin um you mentioned uh or even just in the confines of our workout, we had kind of a impeded fatigue. Like we didn't have an opportunity to like rest seven minutes so that we can have the most optimal set every time. Yeah. How have you incorporated a lot of this into your bodybuilding stuff that you're doing, functional bodybuilding? functional bodybuilding. Yeah, I think it's, that's, you just summarize it so well. I'm a guy, I, I'm always, uh, you know, trying to solve for problems, right? That's what we were just talking about, or I was just saying, and you know, I was coming, I was coming out of a community that

was very committed to intensity and the measures of intensity were, were, there were only a couple. It was do more reps, do them faster, do them heavier. Right. And those were, it was just, it was just three, you had three options. And if you went to the gym and you didn't outperform any one of those three, it was then assumed you weren't getting good training. You weren't, you know, you weren't going to get leaner. You weren't going to get stronger. You were a failure. I had a lot of people that were emotionally like struggling with this in their later years. They're like, I just can't get myself up to beat my old time. Like, I just don't want to do it. I'm like, and they felt shame for that. Oh, what about the anxiety attached to it about a specific workout coming up on Friday? And it's only Monday.

Yeah. People were flipping. I remember. Totally flipping. It's max out Friday, you know, every day. Right. And that's stressful. And so that was why I was like, Hey, what are, let's look at all the variables that can raise intensity or just make workouts more challenging. Right. And when I find those, I'm like, okay, I got to hang on to that. I got to hang on to that. Oh, if I just change the grip, that made it more challenging. If I just change the tempo, if I put my feet up on a block, added some range of motion, that made it more challenging. Like, let's just compile these ways of increasing the intensity that are, that go beyond the three that I was, I was so married to for so long.

And by, let's say now we have 20 options to increase intensity. There's more, you know, the rest period alone is something that in weight training, I don't think people identify as so powerful often enough. I just did a set of 15 on the bench press and I sat around for three minutes and then I did another set of 15. Okay. Well, what about do 15 rest? 60 seconds, go do a set of deadlifts, rest 60 seconds, come back and actually be structured about that. That'll change

the intensity, the metabolic stress, the metabolic load of that workout and give you a way to make training, whatever, harder, burn more calories, uh, you know, make you feel like you got a good session in sweat more, breathe more, all those things. It's easier to do with other folks too. Like if you're trying to do like a 700 pound deadlift workout, you know, it's, it's hard to change the weights and try to figure out like, how do I incorporate anybody else? But now when you train like this, you can invite anyone at any time to train with you, which is motivational and going to keep you, uh, on point a little easier. Yeah. So any of these, uh, you can invite anyone at any time to train with you, which is motivational and going to keep you on point a little easier. Yeah.

So any of these, you know, doing heavy cleans or heavy snatches or anything, they're all great. But how cool is it that you can kind of work out with just about anybody? Yeah. Because you can just change the weights a little bit. You might not even need to change the weights because you might be ending up in someone else's kind of wheelhouse if you're doing three or four movements in a row. Even if it's still a movement that you're really strong on, you still might be dying when you're trying to do it because you can't breathe. Yeah. I mean, what I know now about how I'm delivering training, it's like I kind of miss – like I don't coach group fitness anymore.

We don't have a group fitness gym. We're out of that. fitness anymore. We don't have a group fitness gym. We're out of that. But if I could go back and bring this, this, these concepts into the group fitness gym, you know, two weeks ago is my wife's birthday and what she wants and what she misses, she's like, I miss the group class. I'm like, I get it, babe. Like we don't. So we got together a few people. Nate came like my business partner. I was there. My wife was there. We had like a little small group workout and we did a functional bodybuilding workout. And I think we all got done and we were just like, so we're so jazzed for like, dude, we'd see that group workout with like four people with very

different fitness levels. We all was for her birthday. This is what she wanted to do for her birthday. Right before we went out to brunch, it was cool. Um, but like, like you said, it's, it can be very communal in that way. And it really does with these principles and elements brought in. It does kind of make it feel very like, well, I don't even know how to compare to what this other person is doing because I'm doing my own thing over here and I'm counting reps and tempos and I'm working hard and they're working hard. And OK, great. Like there's no time on the board. Like we didn't go and smash the button and be like, I'm done time. Like, you know, I think you finished first, which is fine.

I don't think I did. But, um, but yeah, it's like, it's just, it is a very, in my, obviously my opinion, but a fun communal way to, to train that, that doesn't separate people based upon their performances. It brings them together. I have experience with training, with training with CrossFitters before. And the only times that I've ever really worked out with CrossFitters, they've been like mutant CrossFitters. They've all been like CrossFit game athletes and sometimes even champions.

And a few times, like I remember working out with Ben Smith, I was like, oh, this is kind of cool because I'm kind of like halfway, partially sort of in some weird way, still kind of hanging with him. And I know I wasn oh, this is kind of cool because like I'm kind of like a halfway partially sort of in some weird way still kind of hanging with him. And I know I wasn't really hanging with him. He's like, let me hang with him. But then it's separation started go like this and then like that and just wider and wider. And I was like, oh, my God, he's like totally fucking killing me. And the same thing happened with Kalipa before and a couple other people.

So on one of those rounds that we were doing, I was was like you started kind of speeding up a bit and i was like oh i was like i better get my shit together otherwise i'm gonna end up like getting lapped a couple times so i got a little anxious there i was like i better move my ass yeah um we have that ben patrick seminar coming up on october 24th yeah and i know that you've done some stuff with him and i've seen additions of like movements that he's talked about into your functional bodybuilding programs. Those movements have helped out my knees a ton, by the way, their night and day from when they, what they were in February, but how, uh, what concepts were you able to take from there? How was it beneficial for you? What, what are you like adding into functional bodybuilding that maybe wasn't there before. Yeah. A lot of things. Um, I've, you know, I, I think I, I got to meet or

virtually meet Ben in March or April. I think I was just like many people just, Oh, knees over toes guy, Instagram, you know, went down the rabbit hole immediately. And I started doing his program and just doing things. And then one day he like messaged me. He's like, oh my God, you're doing this stuff. And he's like, I'm a big fan. And I realized he had been following me for like six months or a year. And he just gave me his phone number right away. He's like, text me anytime.

And I'm like, really? Are you serious? Like, that's really generous. Like, I wonder if you do this with everybody. Like, that seems kind of, you're opening the door to a lot of questions. I was like, cool, man. I appreciate it. I promise I won't blow you up too much. And then, you know, if you've been in a text message thread with him and he gets going, it's like you're like, it's like four pages of text and you haven't even been able to write like, Hey, is he at a computer or something? He told me once he's like, yeah, I answered every single customer message for like two years from my phone and I got really fast. And I was like, apparently, but, um, yeah, things that I took from him early on were, you know, a history of like some injuries through, through sports and CrossFit.

Um, I have been on a journey of like, I want to train. I want to challenge my body for a long time and I don't want to be impacted by, and I won't be held back by injuries. You know, that that's a big thing for me. And so I'm like, what, what does it take to, to challenge myself, to push that limit, but not overdo it. And when I really attached to some of what he was talking about, which like you do certain movements and you do the right amount of them at these standards, you can bulletproof a joint. I was like, okay, yeah, that's, that resonates with me. How do I bulletproof every joint of my body? And then the concepts are, well, you develop strength through range. You do things like slant board squats or positional strength elements. You do them and you look at the upstream and the downstream joints and the strength of

those muscles. And you really kind of understand. I mean, he took my concepts that I had already been thinking about of like strength balance, about bulletproofing, about longevity. And it was just an elegant system. I was like, oh, this makes so much sense. And then the other thing that really struck me with Ben was the way he delivered his programs as like kind of a, you don't need anything to start. This is body weight. It's very, it's very fundamental. And then you can progress. He was really, I think he's really a master of showing

the regression concept and making it feel really empowering to people versus like, I go do the scaled version. Right. And that's, that's so important because most people are not going to be able to come in and do the workout we did today, the way we did it. We need to regress it, but we need to make it regressed in a way that feels like, yes, like I'm having a win today. I feel really good. And he makes you feel like you're having a win by doing your first set of body weight, tip raises. You're just like, oh my God, I got a wicked pump just by, you know, put my butt against the wall and lifting my toes. Um, and then as we got to talking more, just we, I just realized like he and I had so many, you know, commonly held beliefs about the, uh, inclusion of things, not the exclusion of like, like, oh, that's good.

I'll use that. You know? And he was like, he was such a, he was such a sponge with anything I was throwing at him. I'm like, hey, I did this workout today. I did that. You know, he came and did a, a functional bodybuilding workout like that. And he's like, I'm taking this information. I'm using it. I'm going to go practice it. And I thought that was just, you know, really

inspiring too. It's like, somebody's like, oh, that's cool. I'm going to stick to my thing over here. You know, like I'm too good for that. Or I won't touch that because it's, it's not my thing. Um, that's fine. But it also, it's not how I feel about, you know, this about fitness and about, you know, longevity and creating, you know, consistency for people. The stuff that he does. I mean, it works. You know, I know that we incorporated it when he was here. And one thing I think that's really interesting about some of it, and you mentioned this earlier about you didn't know if you would have enough time to like do, you know, multiple workouts a day. I feel like with people like Ben Patrick, that sometimes they're showing you like something so simple. You're just like,

oh, I can, I could, I could throw that in a couple of times a week. And it gives you like another thing to do a week. And it's not necessarily like a workout. It's more like just exercise. And then, as I mentioned earlier, it's like part of just part of like your body hygiene. You know, you brush your teeth and it's like, well, why not move your elbows around too? Like take care of your teeth. Why not take care of your, you know, not just your bones of your body, but take care of some of your joints. Yeah. Move your shoulders around a little bit.

Move your knees around a little bit, your hips. Yeah. And it's going to be different for each person. Like we, you know, some people are going to have to pay a lot more attention to it. So for me, uh, I'm just thinking like some of the stuff that he showed, there's some things that are more complex and more difficult for me to, uh, do that. I just don't necessarily enjoy because they're harder, but they would, they would clearly benefit me, but I adapted at least some of it. I'm like, okay, I, those three, four things I could see

putting those into my life and having those be part of my day to day. I went and I ran the other day, um, a while back I was running and my knee got a little swollen and got a little screwed up. And, uh, so I had to go back and do more knees over toes stuff. I had to work on the tibs and do a bunch of different stuff. And sure enough, the, a lot of the pain subsided, but it's been, I don't even know how long it's probably been decades since I've been able to like decelerate my body. I actually, at some point in my life, I used to be pretty fast. I used to build a sprint pretty good. But I, i got to a point where i couldn't slow down you know yeah right and i'm juggernaut right um but uh yeah more recently i i went for i did some sprints i did like 12 sets of sprints and i was able not to

stop on a dime or anything it still took me a while to slow down i was still being very cautious but that's exactly what ben's talking about is that you're in a knee over toe position when you're doing some deceleration. So the shit works great. Yeah. I mean, the, the, the results and the efficacy of, of some of his systems, you know, they speak for themselves as long as you do them. And, um, but again, like back to like, what about him really stood out or what, what, what, how'd the relationship grow? Um, it was that that like what you said, it's like, you don't have to make this your a hundred percent thing that you do. You know, you can take elements from it. And that to me is very aligned with how I feel about

functional bodybuilding. It's like, I don't want, I don't need you to be a hundred percent all in on functional bodybuilding because truly it's, that's not what it's about. It's about, you know, maybe those, that tempo superset that we did, you know, that concept, maybe it's about. It's about, you know, maybe those, that tempo superset that we did, you know, that concept, maybe you do two of those a week, you know, in place of your five sets of five, you know, and now you're getting a different stimulus in your training and you learn that. Or maybe that like work capacity thing we did with the sleds and the, you know, swings and with the floor presses, like, okay, you know, let me incorporate that once or twice a week. Cause it's going to help you with, you know, learning how to control your

breathing while actually putting out, you know, some power and some resistance, which might translate well, your, you know, jujitsu. And, uh, and that again, comes from solving a problem that I felt for years, which was, you know, people got into the sport of CrossFit or the, you know, and it was like CrossFit or nothing. I'm a hundred percent. It's like, this is my, this is my thing. It's like, and it didn't leave room for anything else. It's like, Oh, you want to come in? How do you just dip your toe into it? It's like, I just want to try a little bit of it. It's like, no, no, you got to do the whole thing. It's like, no, you don't have to do the whole thing. You just take elements that really can work for you.

And I want to expose people to a lot of different methodologies inside of this program, inside of our approach so that like, Hey, six out of 10 of them work really well. I'm going to keep using them. Yeah. We've got people that love all 10 out of 10 and they're, they're our diehards. But it's like at the end of the day, even if you just take two of the principles and you're using them every week, that's a win and that's helping people. And I think Ben really believes that. And, and I use, you know, I use some of his, his zero knees over toes, uh, ATG system program concepts to warm up my knees any day I squat. It's like, okay, I'm just, I just do these things. I got my monkey foot.

I got my slant board. I got my, you know, I got my tip bar and I just knock them out and I'm feeling good. And I squat and you know, that's it. And I don't need to, I don't need to like invest, you know, in the, in the whole system and do nothing else. Yeah. Throughout today, uh, Charles Poliquin's names come up quite a bit. I've heard you mention him quite a bit.

Ben's mentioned quite a bit. Mark Smalls mentioned him, right? So what have you learned or maybe some big concepts do you think you learned and maybe you've been utilizing that were from Charles Poliquin? Like, you know, one of the, like an eye, I don't know, we probably all have an experience of like, I had an eye-opening workout at some point in my life. A lot of people that I've met over the years had that eye-opening experience with CrossFit. They came in, it was the baseline workout that we did for new members. They would row 500 meters, do 40 air squats, 30 sit-ups, 20 push-ups, 10 pull-ups. That 5-4-3-2-1 format would make one out of three people throw up. The other two people were just obliterated. They're like, what? So they had that eye-opening moment.

I had my eye-opening workout moment. After probably three, four years of going and doing the machines, my cousin, who lived in Tahoe city. Uh, he, they, he and his family own the ironworks gym in Tahoe city, right by the Safeway there. Uh, it was a McDonald's. Um, he got into training. He was like probably 18. I was like, or he was like 20, I was 13. And he was like going through a big bodybuilding bulking diet. He was eating like 30 eggs a day. I don't know. It just seemed absurd to me at the time, but he was just massing.

He was getting big and he was doing these workouts and they were, you know, he was like, yeah, come and work out with me today. I was like, cool. And I'm, I'm, I love working out. I want to lift weights with my cousin, Brian. Let's get after it. We go into the gym, Smith machines loaded with 95 115 pounds he's got me and his two buddies and he's trying to like orchestrate this like workout but like he's like

we got to do this tempo thing we're going to do these tempos and we got rest periods and he's like trying to tell me what to do and you know his workout got totally fucked because he was just babysitting me and this other guy but he's like basically taking us through a split squat, a Smith machine split squat at a very slow tempo into strict chin ups with the neutral grip. And he's over there basically doing shoulder presses. Cause I'm, I'm crapping out. He's like, you got to stick to the tempo. He's like crushing me on this tempo.

And the rest periods were short. And it was like, I don't remember the reps, but it was this Polycon. It was a Polycon program, German body comp program. And on set three, we had just started. Set three, I threw up. I was on the floor in the bathroom upstairs for a while at their gym. My mom and my aunt come, you know, later on. They're like, what did you do to Mark?

Like, what happened to him? He's on the floor. And I was just wrecked. And I remember leaving the gym and being like, I'm going to get this workout. I'm going to come back and do this again. And I went back home, was at the Gold Gym in Marin, tried to do it two more times, threw up both times. It just kept crushing me. I was like, this is insane. And so a couple of years go by. And of course, I learned more about what the system was and what I was doing. And then in college, like I pulled back out some of those old programs, did it with a buddy and got into the best, like the best physical shape of my life. I was like ripped in college for the first time ever. principles just really stuck with me. And then the years go on and I just sort of, you know, paid attention to what he was saying and, um, you know, get little nuggets about, you know, how to optimize muscle mass. And then of course, in his later years, he really started to talk about like, you know, nutrition, holistic wellness, like, you know, spiritual stuff as well. And just sort of understanding like, what does it mean to, to really be a complete whole healthy person beyond the sets and the reps too? I have a binder of every single article he's ever written. Wow. I'm like a mega fan. And he was a, he was a friend. So we lost, we lost an amazing

person. You know, it's devastating. The information that that guy, that that guy died with, uh, it's just brutal that he, I mean, he still had so much more to share, you know, and died with, uh, it's just brutal that he, I mean, he still had so much more to share, you know, and he was, uh, he was, uh, truly, uh, truly amazing. Um, one of the things that I, uh, you know, took from him was, was these, uh, ideas of, uh, of the tempo training type stuff. And you just take a simple exercise, like just a hammer curl, you know, and try to go, you know, three or four seconds on the way up, hold it for a second and go three or four seconds on the way down. I mean, it just makes the exercises really brutal. The other thing that he did is he would superset a lot of stuff. As you're talking about, you're pointing out there,

he would do, you know, opposite muscle groups, you know you know so he might or opposing muscle groups might do biceps and triceps he might pair chest and back and he might pair quads and hamstrings I've had a I've had some amazing people that I've worked out with over the years but John Cena was somebody that I got had opportunity workout with here and there And he used to kill me. We would work out. He loves just straight up bodybuilding stuff. And John does the craziest workouts. He's like, oh, today we're doing Indianapolis 500.

I'm like, what the fuck is that? And it's like 500 reps on a leg press with just as much weight as you can handle. I'm like, none of this makes any, what are we doing? You know, I'd be sore for like three weeks, you know, and he's laughing because he's just a fucking animal. And so he's just knocking the shit out of me here and there with some training sessions. And then he's like, Hey, you know what? Go ahead and pick whatever you want to do. And I was like, all right, we're going to do some squats and we're going to do some leg curls in between the squats, pull a Quinn style. So we're doing this tempo stuff and he's never messed with any of it before. He ends up throwing up. He ends just like turning like really pasty white and i'm

like i got this motherfucker i'm like this is fucking great because he crushed me so many other times and made me feel so sick yeah well it's it's like what's the what's the king of all you know variables in the gym you know it's like well people talk about reps it's all about the sets it's all it's like the tempo actually is what dictates everything the outcome you know in in power lifting there's a tempo to that it's just fast and it's you know you're not you're not trying to like i my limited understanding of training for power lifting is we're trying to build explosive you know strength like fast move shit fast and well that's a tempo and then in a different setting the tempo changes and the goal is hypertrophy. And then, well, if you understand that tempo is just giving you access to the ways that muscles can contract fast, slow, isometrically, you know, and everything in between, then you can start to play with a lot of cool stuff in the gym.

stuff in the gym. And yeah, I think people are introduced to the concept of weight training as a, you know, point A to point B concept. You just move, you just got to go through the range of motion and then versus like, you got to go through the range of motion at this pace. And whoa, that's different. And that could fix a lot of problems. It could fix, you know, people learning good technique. It could fix people overloading too soon it could fix you know people learning good technique it could fix people overloading too soon and being you know lifting weights that are their their connective tissue is not ready for um so yeah it's that's you know it seems so simple but oftentimes the simplest thing is what has the most value i think ben taught taught me that with knee with knee ability it's like just keep it simple like you've got to train through a full range of motion.

You know, ATG split squats, slant board squats, all the, he's just going deep. He's bend the knee, bend the knee over the toe. That's the concept. And it's like with weight training, understand tempo, tempo, tempo, tempo. And, you know, someone's like, ah, I don't want to count.

It's like, great. You know, you're not the thinking athlete yet. You haven't absorbed this stuff and you're not going to be able to do it as long. And then when it breaks, then we can come back and we'll talk about tempo and you'll be into it. training like speed skaters and people from all different sports where it was really important that they had a really good integrity of the knee. And I even remember in a lot of the stuff that he would write, when you saw a workout from him, there was a, it was like, it looked like a prescription or something like you couldn't read. If you didn't know how to read it, you didn't know what the hell was going on. Cause it would say like four, three, four. And you're like, what does all that mean? It's like, well, it means, you know, four seconds on the way up four seconds on or three second pause. And then a four seconds, you know, and you're just like does all that mean it's like well it means you know four seconds on the way up four seconds on or three second pause and then a four seconds yeah you know and you're just

like oh my god okay he's writing the tempo he wrote everything into the workout yeah the rest protocol like everything was spot on if you followed it um you you got some you got some results that were exponentially way faster than anything you've ever done before yeah it's fucking amazing he there there was a it's like a thin paperback book german body composition it's green it's got a picture of him on the front coaching this female athlete lifting and i don't know what you know i think it was written in 90 maybe um and it went out of print so it's hard to get your hands on i had a copy i had at the gym somebody stole Somebody stole it. Somebody borrowed it. Went to go. I was like, okay, I'm going to go get a new one. 500 bucks. What? Like this little paperback, nothing book is 500 bucks. I'm like, I don't think it's worth that much right now. I'm not

going to pull the trigger on it. Fast forward, like two, three years ago, I've talked about it so much. Cause this is the book that I like followed the workout that made me throw up. My business partner finds one and buys it for me for my birthday. It's like, it was like a good condition book. I'm like, so I've got it like in a special place in my, my, my shelf. But what's interesting in that book is that I remember this. So there's some cool, you know, photographs of all the exercises. He's got the workouts and then these, how you do the exercises. I've been coaching split squats for a while. And when I got introduced to it is essentially like a split squat doing 90 degree

hip and knee angles, not knees over toes style. But I always had this burn in my brain that like, when I look at the split squat exercise picture in Pauliken's book, it's the female athlete doing a knees over toes, ATG split squat, like Ben's style, like way out there, knee way over the toe and using a little elevation on one with her foot on the front, front foot elevated and one with the rear foot elevated, still getting that way knee over the toe. And I always had that burn in my brain. And when I saw Ben doing his stuff, it made me think immediately of that book. And I pulled it out.

I'm like, oh yeah, he's doing it. He didn't have, he didn't call it an ATG. It was just a split squat. This is how you do a split squat. And he was a firm believer in like, you know, that's been Ben talks about it too. It's like, get your knees strong over the toe. You're going to have fewer injuries. You're going to be performing better on the field and your sports. Someone that I always had to bring up sometimes from time to time is, um, Mike O'He to time is Mike O'Hearn. Because Mike O'Hearn is 50-something years old, but when you look at his training, when you look at what he's moving, first off, he's moving some disgustingly heavy loads, but slow. Like really slow with a really controlled tempo. And he's one of those individuals who's been able to be so resilient throughout all his training career, even though he's lifted some crazy weights.

And he's 50-something years old, but he's moving better than guys that are in their thirties. Right. Partially, probably because he's slowed a lot of things down and got strong with those ranges, um, over the years. It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, and then of course there's people listening that play sports that need to be fast and, you know, slow tempo training, probably not the predominant, you know, focus that you should be using in your, in your training. And that's fine. But, um, when those people are the inspiration to everyday people, they think, oh, these people train fast. They train heavy. They train explosive. I need to do that. It's like, no, no, no.

Let's use the same movement patterns, but slow it down. I think it works way better for the gen pop and the person that I'm really trying to help, you know, go from from off the couch or just getting started or not having success with their consistent. You know, they've just been inconsistent. And it's like, no, let's let's get you doing these things for a long time. I believe it's referred to as strength aerobics, which sounds ridiculous. But it is also tempo training is utilized often when people have an injury. Yeah. And I've torn pecs and hamstrings and all kinds of different things.

And when I've come back from those injuries, I had to train really slow. One of the things we did today, we did a slower version of, uh, of a deadlift with the trap bar deadlift three seconds on the way up three seconds on the way down. Um, I've done sets before where you do like 15 reps like that. And it's just, uh, I got it from James Smith who, uh, has been on our show before it just, again, it makes you want to throw up like the metabolic cost of, of doing an exercise like that. So people that are trying to look to bring some new intensity to their workout, maybe they haven't messed around with some of these things. These are amazing ways to work out and they can also help you to kind of restore tissue.

So if you have a bad elbow or bad shoulder, find exercises that allow you to train with a weight that doesn't hurt, move super duper slow. allow you to train with a weight that doesn't hurt, move super duper slow, um, you know, maybe have, uh, each set last 40 seconds to 60 seconds or something like that. And, uh, you'll be shocked. You'll be shocked at what it can do for the health of your shoulder, their health of your joints. I think, um, you know, something that you just said, it's like a kind of a guiding principle for a lot of what I do and how I evaluate the health and fitness landscape. What do people do when things go wrong? You know, you get injured, you got to train like this.

Okay. But then you're not injured anymore. So what are you going to do? Go do the crazy shit that gets you injured. It's so interesting. It's like, okay, I'm out of pain now. Let's go and fuck our shit up again right it's like no how do we keep these principles that get people out of pain but keep them in there

and ben and i we went back and forth and created i created workouts with him that i thought would showcase functional bodybuilding and his methods all in one. So basically what we did today, but using movements that are really integral to his system. And we ended up putting like an ebook together that we are selling on our site and it was called beyond knee pain. And the idea was, okay, you're out of pain now. What are you going to do? You don't, don't go do the dumb thing over here that got you in knee pain in the first place.

Bring these principles with you. Bring the stuff that Ben is showing us, teaching us that is foundational to improving knee health and keep it as part of your regular routine. But you can increase intensity with these principles. And I think the same is true when I see people like they get all crazy with their diet. They're eating this, they're doing that. They're changing their macros. They're getting in the weeds with all the nuanced stuff and nutrition and it falls apart. Okay. What do I do? Uh, go back to eating three meals that are balanced with protein at the center of it and

vegetables on the plate. Like just get back to the basics. And then once you've gotten back to the basics and you're feeling good and you're looking good, don't jump ship to, you know, the crazy, you know, nuanced macro diet. Like that was working. Just tweak it a little bit. You know, don't go nuts and try and now go do the other thing. What are some of the things that you um, you really utilize for recovery? We talked about sleep a little bit. Maybe we can talk more about that, how you structure that. But you also talked about that, you know, you have a dope song and a cold plunge at your house.

Yeah. I'm just curious how maybe those things have played a part if they play a part for you. Yeah. Um, well, yeah, we were saying like, start with the one habit that's central and then add the next habit once it's become routine and, you know, eventually create this whole like suite of healthy lifestyle factors. You know, I got the sun, I got the cold plunge, got the hot tub, got the workout home at home gym. I got this, I got the chili pad. I got, you know, it's like, where do I, what's the biggest bang for your buck thing? You know, if I go back to it, it's food first. That's it, you know, food and hydration and, uh, you know, getting quality foods, eating real food, as minimally

processed food as possible, because that's going to allow me to eat the biggest volume of food, feel satiated and also get micronutrients and, you know, make sure I'm not at a deficit in any place. Um, sleep is, is really important. A really important. I think people spend a lot of time talking about the number of hours of sleep. I'm a big fan of talking about that sleep consistent window. When do you go to bed and when do you wake up? And can you make it the same time every single day? And I think starting there, whether it's six hours or five hours or eight hours, if it's, I'm always in bed at nine and I always wake up at four 30 every day, seven and a half hours, that is super valuable to setting up good rhythms for myself.

Cause every day is almost, it's predictable at how I'm going to feel like I might have a bad night sleep last night because my daughter woke up a couple of times or it's not as perfect as the day before or whatever, but it's always about the same. And that way I can start to feel like this is what my body actually is supposed to feel like each day. And you become aware of when things are off. Whereas somebody is going to bed at one in the morning one day and 9 p.m. another day and somewhere in between, and then they're sleeping in until 10 on the weekends, but then they're waking up at five on the workday.

They're so dysregulated in terms of what their body feels like when they get up. They have no sense of what's normal. What's, what's their baseline. They're just bouncing all over the place. Um, so those are kind of, those are foundations. I've always been like, I get to bed at the same time. I wake up at the same time, eat relatively the same throughout the day, every day. I eat relatively the same throughout the day, every day. Uh, and then, uh, in the last couple of years, I really got into like, I, I think Kelly Starrett one point, like I remember watching

and he and Juliette like did the hot tub all the time. And he just talked about how great the hot tub was. And I was like, oh man, that's my dream. I want to have the hot tub. Like that's, that's going to make me more supple, just like Kelly, like getting the hot tub, you know? So I got the hot tub a few years back and then, then sauna started to like, and then I see Laird doing it and Kelly's doing sauna. I'm like, oh, I got to get, you know, I was like, I just wanted to like do the things that I saw the people doing. And I incorporated these into my like life. And, um, I believe that heat is, you know, it's like the, the, the cardiovascular system, the vascular system, like the Venus return, the capillary beds, like this. And I read it.

I don't know who wrote it. And they said it so eloquently. And it was just such a burn in my brain. It's like that system is designed for temperature regulation, being exposed to the elements having cold and then it being hot like we didn't used to have these temperature control rooms when we were evolving we were in the we were out in the world it was hot it was cold you know and and our skin and the circulatory system underneath was forced to like kind of constrict and expand and dilate and manage temperature control. And so now hot exposure, cold exposure in the, in the cold tub, that contrast doing it every day,

walking out, cause all these things are outside, you know, I don't have my sauna inside. I'm outside naked, you know, getting in the sauna, getting in the cold tub. And it's, you know, it's November. And I mean, in December it starts to be like 36, 38 degrees. And we're in, when you walk outside and you're naked, I'm like, I'm actually doing some, some real like paleo training here. Like this is what our bodies are supposed to do. And I think that's, I just have this belief that it's very healthy for, for vascular system. And people are like, Marcus, you're so vascular. How do you get like that? I'm like, well, you've got to be lean enough to see the veins, but I think you train them by like exposing yourself to different temperatures. And so I, that's kind of like a,

I don't want to say it's like a secret weapon, but I think it's just important to me. And now it's like, if I, if we go and travel to a hotel for like a couple of nights and I don't have access to those things, I'm like, uh, I i don't know i don't feel right like something feels off like i gotta get in a you know like i run like the hottest bath that they can and get get in that instead of the sauna no i i freaking love it too i've been actually yesterday i went to this um this bath house called asha urban bath down here in sack and they and they have a great sauna, but I was just going from the sauna to the cold plunge, the sun to the cold plunge. And it just felt amazing. I try to sauna a lot, but I want to get a cold plunge system. I want to get a sauna at some point because I honestly feel like, especially controlling breathing in

there, um, and controlling breathing in the cold since I've been sauna for so long. I think that that's one thing that's helped me to be able to control my breathing on the mat. As far as jujitsu control my breathing better when I'm working out in the gym, just to try to slow things down and keep things. So I don't, you know, tap myself out. I think that makes a big difference there. Hopefully someday research shows it, but I don't think we have that yet. Yeah. Well, research is oftentimes pretty far behind, you know, practical applications in our industry. So I know you're 100% on to something. What do you got brewing over there, Andrew?

I know you got questions. Yeah, well, the chat room, we've been going back and forth quite a bit today. So thank you, everybody, for participating in the chat room. But one thing I was curious early, because when you were talking about kind of like you don't have to kill yourself every workout which I agree with because since I've been doing that I've been feeling a lot better and I've been able to do it every single day and I'm not you know murdering myself to where it's like I'm no longer a good husband I'm no longer a good parent at the end of the day because I'm not present because I'm so tired but for somebody to like you, do they have to go through the

years of beating the shit out of themselves in order to now slow down? Interesting. Yeah. Well, I, I mean, I've, I've heard you talk about this. It's like, it's not about beating yourself up. It's about putting in work, but putting it in consistently for a long time. I think what we were discussing is that like you beat yourself up in the pursuit of something beyond what is average. You know, you want to be excellent. You're going to have to push the envelope. That's, but that was driven by something. It was driven by something inside of me that wasn't like, you know, I want to just look good. It's like, I was committed to like, I need something. It's a deep desire to push yourself that much. And you need to have like, you need to be a little crazy

and you need to have a little, some, some reason that is deep in you. And that, that likely won't last forever for people. Um, so I, I think it is truly about like create the consistency. What, what most people can visualize as their best self is attainable through workouts that don't make you feel like death, just done long enough. You know, people look at the Arnold Schwarzenegger physique and they think, oh, that looks good, but I don't want to look like that. I just want to look like that. It's like, okay, well, if you want to look like Arnold, you better be ready to die, you know, on leg day, you know, and if, but if you want to look like this, you know, it's not going to be easy, but you can get there if you give it enough time and if you do it consistently yeah but also if you were if you were to look back at your when you were at your highest level of like crossfit if somebody came into your gym and they went to do a workout with you you'd fucking crush them yeah so i think there's a misconception that like you're beat down you know like you you are you are taking it to yourself but you're that's your current state like you're ready for all that shit. Um, I'd say the same was true for me. Like when someone came in the gym and lifted with me, um, I could lift with anybody. I could lift with some of the strongest people in the world and sometimes beat some of the strongest people in the world at that time. But when I look back at it now, I'm like, that shit was fucking crazy. What was I doing?

What was I doing? And now I can look back at it and be like, I think I had a misunderstanding of even what I was chasing. How was I so lost in any of that? But at the time, that's what I was doing. And I was accepting of all the challenges and all the different things that were kind of going on at the time. So in my opinion, you do not have to beat the shit out of yourself to be great. You do have to find uh, find a way to always increase the challenges though. Yeah. That's a little harder. Yeah. And I think if you have enough options to increase, yeah, you, you, you have to work hard and you have to work hard long enough. And that's how you see results. It's just helping people dial in on like, what does it mean to work hard? Well, it doesn't necessarily mean, you know, vomiting each workout. Um, but it also doesn't mean like, oh, it's good. I'm good. You know, it's like you better grunt, you know, you better, your grip might start to fail. You know, you might be like, where's the chalk? Like, I don't know if I can do this next set. Uh, those are questions that need to be surfacing. If you're in the gym and you're, you know, able to really pay attention to the show on TV and follow the nuances of the characters, it means you're probably not working hard enough.

That's a pretty good barometer there. Yeah, because when you walked in, you know, because this is the first time I've seen you in person, you know, I've seen all the pictures and you look amazing. And, you know, you had your sweater on. I was just like okay like i don't look too far off from this guest you know like uh we weigh about the same right now um and so i'm like okay cool and then you take your shirt off and i'm like jesus like okay there's the pictures that i had seen you know and then all the vascularity and stuff so that's that's what got me thinking when you're talking about you know years of crossfit working really hard and

then now kind of slowing down and still getting the the stimulus and still getting you know years of crossfit working really hard and then now kind of slowing down and still getting the the stimulus and still getting you know progress and making that sort of thing but literally as i'm asking the question in sema's voice pops in my head and it's like it's just going to take more time if we're going to slow down this way then obviously that um expecting it to happen in that short time frame is not going to happen yeah it might take double the time and then another question that was kind of popping around the um the chat room people started asking like what qualifies as something as far as like reps and sets for hypertrophy but because that's kind of like a weird question to try to answer for a broad spectrum of people when it comes to the functional bodybuilding stuff what because like today you guys are doing sets of six you know your their controlled tempo stuff so i guess when it comes to that like are you able to say like this amount of reps per

set is going to put us in hypertrophy or is it all just going to get you there just because of the duration of each uh set yeah it's um it's interesting because i think you know hypertrophy is not just a training uh variable like it's not just training variables, you know, hypertrophy is not just a training variable. Like, it's not just training variables. Like, you can only grow if you eat enough to grow. And if you eat enough, there's a lot of different ways to train that will make you get bigger muscles. You could be doing, you know, you could be an Olympic lifter who does one rep at a time and you're eating a lot and you'll the muscles will grow eventually, you know, and or you could be like a traditional bodybuilder and do it that way. So in functional bodybuilding, what I like to teach people or talk about is less about the number of reps, less about the number of sets.

What's your total time under tension in a set? And I like to aim for, you know, something North of 35, 40 seconds. So that was what we were kind of hitting today. It was like, I was doing sets of eight on the deadlift and each repetition was supposed to take six seconds. So, you know, the math on that is 48 seconds per set. I would say that's kind of hypertrophy, you know, ideal hypertrophy range. And similarly with the Philly press, kind of hitting similar time under tension. If you add together the amount of time you're doing on both arms and then the rest period, like how much time in between sets.

We were in that 60 to 90 second range resting between sets, not three minutes. You know, you don't get a full recharge of your strength system. 60 to 60 to 90 second range resting between sets, not three minutes. You know, you don't get a full recharge of your strength system. So that's kind of what I would, what I teach people. But, you know, that method of training has been great for shredding body fat. It's also great for building lots of muscle because it has a stimulus that when paired with the right dietary approach gets you the body you want. So be like, what's the best way to grow muscle? It's like, eat more and train, but eat more. Like I can't build any muscle. It's like, cause you don't eat. And so not because you're

not doing the right reps, you're not doing the right tempo. You're not doing the right, you know, weight. It's because you just, you're, you were brought up and the way you learned the rhythm of eating food in your life was like this. And to grow, you need to double that. And that really is uncomfortable for people. I'm that person, like somebody the other day was like, hey man, if you put on a little body fat, you're probably going to perform and feel better. I'm like, you're probably right. But that means I burn 4,000 calories a day. To eat 6,000 calories a day to get a little bit more meaty is uncomfortable to me. It's really uncomfortable. You know, I don't, I can do it one day a week, but I can't do it every day. And that's what it takes.

Eat some Pop-Tarts and Ben and Jerry's guarantee you'll get those calories. Exactly. It's like lower the quality, lower the quality, find more processed food than you can do it. And I'm so opposed to that because of, you know, other core beliefs I have about health and wellness, but I get it. And it's like, so when people like, I can't put them. That's a big deal though, being a leader and being somebody that shares a message, like you don't want to, like you could eat those things here and there. They could help you maybe with performance or something, but you, you're sharing a message, you know, and you want to try to be as like true to that as he can be.

Yeah. And then during the, uh, the workout, when you guys were talking about tempo, Mark, you had mentioned like, you know, because we are under so much, uh, time under tension, like you're probably burning a lot more calories. I had never actually heard of that. Cause like I'm in my head, I'm thinking like an isometric hold, people will assume that they're going to get stronger. But as far as, as, as far as what I understand, you're only going to get strong in that one, like isometric, uh,

whatever you want to call it, range of motion. So I had actually never heard of literally just doing the same amount of reps and sets, but just doing them slower to actually burn more calories. I thought that was actually really like an eye opening for me. Yeah. I'd have to look into it even further because it can get super complicated

really quickly. Um, but, uh, you will feel, you'll breathe heavier, you know, you'll,

you'll notice you're going to probably perspire faster, you know, things like that. Um, started to tremble. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You start to, yeah, you start to shimmy and shake and you're like, Hmm, what's, what's some of that now? Could, could, could you burn more calories doing eight sets of two with enough rest to lift a heavy weight? Like, let's say in SEMA, let's just say you did similar volume with 500 pounds in the deadlift versus using 225, which is going to burn more calories.

If we went super slow at 225 or if he's lifting 500 pounds, I'd put my money on the 500 pounds. You know, even if we equated it properly, the weight, maybe that's too big a discrepancy, but you see my point, you know, and on the topic of hypertrophy, I think people make a big mistake in thinking that there's this, and you pointed it out, but there's a big mistake of thinking that things need to land in this like rep range. And there's even a big mistake in thinking that it needs to land in this time range. That information, first of all, is probably super old. But secondly, that information does not mean that when you do three repetitions that it's worthless for hypertrophy.

And it also doesn't mean that when you do 30 repetitions that it's worthless for hypertrophy. It just means that under normal circumstances, under normal conditions, somewhere between 6 to 12 reps is usually ideal for hypertrophy. And it's a decent rule of thumb to follow. But what if we just start changing the game and start changing everything around? It changes everything, right? Like what if we do a drop set? Yeah. You know, what if we do a giant set

of the same body part? Right. I mean, now you're just getting into so many different variables. It's impossible to even study any of this stuff. And so it is nice to know some of these kind of general guidelines. It's like, okay,

I can plug that in there. I can plug that in there. But don't forget that being able to lift heavier weight is going to assist you oftentimes in being able to increase the intensity of any lift. And the more weight that you can lift over time, the easier that it will probably be to be bigger, like more muscular, maybe even more fit. But to a certain extent, to a certain point, you can get lost in any of that. Same thing with getting fit. Having a level of fitness is super important. Makes a lot of sense. The more fitness that you have, the more work you can do in a shortened and more condensed period of time. But you can get so carried away with that, that you're maybe not strong enough to get in the volume and the work that you need. So I think you put it really nicely

and just saying like, it's just going to take long. It's going to take a long ass time because what are you in search of? You're in search of all of it. Yeah. It's going to take a long ass time to get there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and you're, everything you just said is completely accurate and right. And, you know, as we get further into the training universe, we learn that, oh, there's so many variables that really impact each other. true for general population people getting into training because it's like okay i don't you know they they don't know what a drop set is yet they don't know these other variables but if they go into the gym and they try and hit 6 to 12 reps they slow the tempo down a little bit they get 30 to 45 seconds of of work for each set that's that's a good starting place and then they can learn that that's not the absolute only way they can grow. Yeah. It's good because people just want to be told what to do. The thing that they have a hard time with though is they're like,

oh, but he, Marcus told me I have to do, you know, whatever at reps and sets and I can't do anything else. But it's like, well, if you experimented,

maybe you might realize that like doing the tempo stuff is actually going to feel better. Training is an evolution. It's like learn something that you can grab a hold of that gets you started and then be open-minded enough to just let more seep in over time as you get better. Don't try and learn 20 things at the beginning, you know, learn your one anchor point and then move forward. Yeah.

And on the topic of caloric, you know, output, you know, people do want to burn calories, right? In 45 minutes, if I can burn 500 calories and feel good at the end versus 200, you know, it's an energy balance equation that people are trying to optimize so they can look and feel the way they want to feel. And I think as an, as a high level athlete, yeah, the answer is, yeah, if you can go and hit eight sets of two with high weights, like the impact that's going to have on your, the tissue is, yeah, if you can go and hit eight sets of two with high weights, like the impact that's going to have on your, the tissue breakdown, your nervous system, plus the caloric output in the session. And then the caloric output in trying to recover from the session, like the grand total

of that is probably going to be more than doing a, you know, a tempo, you know, workout, but people that are starting don't have access to that. They can't go do eight sets of, you know, workout, but people that are starting don't have access to that. They can't go do eight sets of, you know, two at 500 pounds, you know, what can they do? And I do believe that doing these tempo resistance training supersets where you can pack a lot into a short amount of time, you can hold more tension. That is the way that people can connect weight training as a great way to burn calories. Cause right now it's burn calories means run on the treadmill, not go and do a weight training set. And I think it's that can introduce people to a concept that really gets them. Oh, yeah, I can burn a lot of calories if I lift this way.

And then just last question for me, because earlier about, you know, eating less and then moving less and then you get into accruing more body fat and then versus eating more and then being able to move more and you're actually going to drop fat. Just because I feel like somebody might misunderstand what you're saying when you're like, no, you need to eat more. What exactly do you mean? What does eating more look like? You had even mentioned like 400 calories. But does that mean adding a bigger piece of steak? Does it mean adding another potato or does it mean adding another bigger piece of steak doesn't mean adding another potato or does it mean adding another pair of pop tarts at the end of the night or whatever? I just want people to understand that that's not what you're saying. Yeah. So, you know, we all have like a

daily energy expenditure that we average over the course of different parts of our life. It can change, you know, when you're more active, less active, but I'm talking to the person who their daily activity combined with their metabolism burns 2,500 calories, let's say as an example, they're in, they're caught up in the culture of, I got to eat less than that. I always have to eat less. I'm going to eat 2,000 calories. I'm always going to be 500 under. You can't be 500 under perpetually forever. You will, your brain will start to do really crazy things. You will start to waste away. You will lose functional tissue and your body will generally want to slow down. So all those things happen. And then because we, I can look over there and there's food right there. Like

you're always surrounded by food. You will eventually fix that problem by reaching for food. You won't be in 500 calorie deficit forever because it's right there. And the marketing is right there. And the burger is right there. So you will overeat. So my point is, instead of trying to stay committed to that, I'm going to always be under eating, try and just eat a I'm going to always be under eating. Try and just eat a little bit more to make that, to hit that maintenance level.

Right. And of course, that's going to be different for each person, but it does look like just add a little bit more food to your plate. You're going to have, you know, you're trying to eat healthy. So you're eating egg whites and spinach and four almonds, right? That's a healthy meal, but it's low calorie focused. It's about restricting. So instead, why don't you add a whole egg to that? Have eight almonds, you know, pour some olive oil on your spinach. You just raise the caloric intake of that meal, not by some crazy substantial amount, but, and you stuck to good foods,

but it's like, just start to reverse the thinking of less is more, less is more, less is more. Why isn't this working anymore? Why isn't this working? It's because you're always thinking less and you're binging and you're eating, you know, you're getting caught up in eating easy to access calories from every angle that is available in the world, which is many. All said, you got any other questions? I'm good. All good. Yeah, thank you so much for today.

That was freaking awesome. And Andrew, want to take us on out of here, buddy? Yeah, I will. Again, shout out to everybody in the live chat. You guys were awesome today. Thank you so much for being so active. And a shout out to All Might. It was funny. i kept telling i could just kept telling that the chat room is not ready to learn biomechanics through a chat room

you know whatever section but uh thank you to element for sponsoring today's podcast uh drink lmnt.com slash power project please follow the podcast at mark bell's power project on instagram at mb power project on tiktok and twitter My Instagram and Twitter is at I am Andrew Z at the Andrew Z on TikTok and SEMA. Where are you at? I'm going to mention one thing real quick. I heard you mention the Chili Pad. We also work with a company called Eight Sleep. They have this mattress topper that cools your bed down to 55 degrees and you can cool

both sides. Game changer. Having the bed be a certain temperature. Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's the thing I miss the most when we're staying in a hotel. I don't care how, the bed could be uncomfortable,

but I'm like, it's just too hot. Big difference. Makes a massive difference. So if you guys are interested, Andrew, tell the people about 8sleep real quick. 8sleep.com.

That's E-I-G-H-T, sleep.com slash power project. I can't spell, okay? Head over there. You guys will receive a hundred and fifty dollars off your, the mattress topper that they were just talking about or your mattress topper and mattress combo. Again,

that's a hundred fifty dollars off links to them down in the description below and see where you at. And it's in my inning at Instagram and YouTube and see my yin yang on Tik TOK and Twitter. Marcus at Marcus Philly on Instagram and on YouTube. Awesome. Thanks again for your time. Really appreciate it.

Just want to end on this last note here. Cause I just was looking up stuff on Charles pull up on like more recently. I was like, man, I, I miss that guy. I want to check out more information on him. So there didn't used to be much information on him online because he held a

lot of stuff close to him. But since his passing, like there's a lot of stuff close to him but since his passing like there's a lot of like seminars and stuff online so i was watching this one clip where somebody was interviewing him and uh he was just like he was really cold like with his like answers and he was he was uh like a no bullshit kind of guy and somebody asked him um they were asking him like how he gets his uh athletes to eat correctly because that's like one of the biggest problems sometimes with athletes. And he said, well, we just have a saying that a third place tastes like cake.

And I just thought that was amazing because, yeah, that means that means that you're probably cheating on your diet. You're not really committed to the full plan. And I was just like, man, that's that's a good one. Yeah. I was like, fuck, man, that's really good. So anyway, strength is never weak. This week is never a strength. Catch you guys later.