Look Good Move Well

If you had extra time in your day, what would be the most impactful way to spend it to help your health, fitness, or longevity? Today's listener question got the gears turning and we cover areas to improve on for sleep, digestion, fitness, and more. Whether you have a little or a lot, giving some attention to where you spend your extra time can make a huge difference in your body composition and health - so listen in for some ideas on which direction to go.

If the drive through window is a regular part of your routine, today’s episode is for you. What do you do when you want to be fit, but all your friends eat fast food? Or maybe your significant other refuses to give up their gummy bear jar, or you need to entertain clients eating out several nights a week. It all comes down to consciousness and commitment to your priorities, so listen in for some guidance for when you need to think fast about what you eat.

Looking back at Awaken Training Series, we’re covering the key themes of Functional Bodybuilding as they’ve evolved over time. If you or your clients are still looking for ways to improve movement quality and progress with purpose, dive into the details of what makes FBB-style workouts so effective at getting stronger, faster, and better without burnout.

Today we take you through the ins and outs of virtual coaching, which can be highly rewarding for both coach and client with the evolution of technology. Still, there are points to consider when you can’t be in the same room as your client, from personal touches to watching movement to setting expectations for communication. In response to a listener question, we’ll give some pointers from our experience coaching clients one to one both online and in person, as well as delivering online group programs.

If one diet approach worked for everyone, we’d all be ripped to shreds. But as you probably know, it ain’t as easy as 1-2-3. That said, let’s say you’re searching for the perfect carb to protein and fat ratio for great performance and body composition, like today’s listener submission. Learn our recommendations for what to do first, how to pick good targets to track, and how long to stick with it before you change up your equation.

As health and fitness coaches, we try to walk next to our clients and help them uncover their own potential for growth, whether through their training or their life experiences outside the gym. Mental health affects us all - and today we share some approaches we take with our clients and each other to be empathetic listeners and better sources of support.

It starts off with the best intentions - you realize you've got an imbalance, or a limited mobility issue. Your coach gives you some exercises, or you find some online fixes, or you see a physical therapist for a time - until you're foam rolling, mobilizing, and supplementary exercising nonstop. If your "helpful homework" has become a full time job, give this episode a listen for some specific ways to find out which fixes are keepers and when it's time to move on.

Welcome to Season Six, where we kick things off with a rapid-fire question series on guilty pleasures, alcohol, and what fitness trends we wish would die. Want to hear what happens when we go hog wild on chicken wings, or how we handle eating out on vacation? Pop the popcorn and settle on in - just bring extra for Marcus, because he's not sharing.

In the continuation of our two-part special episode on gut health, we dive into Marcus's personal experience with gut health protocols as well as what areas you can look at for yourself if you want to improve your digestion. Bad habits sneak up on all of us, but with some mindfulness and education, you can heal your gut so you look, feel, and perform better from the inside out.

In this two-part special episode, we're giving your gut some love to start to draw connections between your hugely important digestive function and your body composition, sleep, recovery, and overall health. Too often we reach for over the counter remedies or accept digestive distress as normal. Today we start by looking at how the gut works, why it's important, and how to notice signs and symptoms that your gut may be signaling for help.

Marcus Filly sits down with Dr. Teddy Willsey (@strengthcoachtherapy), to talk about staying in the training game for the long haul. How do you avoid injuries and be able to keep up big lifting numbers for years and years? We talk about the minimal effective training dose and how to determine what that is for you, and why simply doing rounds for time skips over a key part of physiological development.

In this episode finale, we take a big picture look at the place of Functional Bodybuilding in fitness. See how changes to how we talk about training and changes to the approach we take with clients can deliver an effective focus on health and longevity, without endlessly scaling workouts that were never appropriate to begin with. And learn what lies ahead for coaches and thinking athletes who want to diver deeper into the Functional Bodybuilding approach.

Tons of gyms out there are implementing more Functional Bodybuilding in a group format - terrific! But using movements that require more thought and careful execution can pose some challenges in a group setting. Today's episode covers some tips and tricks to introduce FBB to your groups without overwhelming your clients, and make sure your classes run smoother than a smoothie.

Have you ever heard the misconception that if only you crank up the high intensity, you’ll get shredded and stay that way in a few short minutes per week? Unfortunately, High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) isn’t the magic answer. In order to better understand its role in training, we break down what HIIT really means, and the place of high bursts of intensity in intelligent program design.

Let's say you're crushing life outside the gym, like today's listener submission. Nutrition is on point, training is going well, and you're even meditating daily, you rock star. How much can you safely increase your training volume and intensity without going overboard? In this episode, learn the guidelines for getting after it and the warning signs for when you need to take it down a notch.