"There are no movements in the (regional events) that scare me."
“We got any pics of this Filly guy?” shouted a frustrated photographer in the media trailer after the first day of the 2013 Northern California Regional.
The unknown athlete had pulled off the incredible feat. He out worked everyone but Jason Khalipa on Event 1—Jackie (5:12)—and squatted more than everyone other than Khalipa and Neal Maddox on the Overhead Squat Complex (295.1 lb.).
Eventually, the photographer would find the athlete with long hair, and remember him when he became relevant once again on Day 3. After a three-event streak of 12th-place finishes or higher, Filly climbed back into contention with a second-place finish on the second to last event of the weekend. Entering the final event, he had to stave off Pat Barber in order to earn the final berth to the Games.
When he pulled it off, Filly became an instant celebrity within the CrossFit community. But what fans didn’t know is that Filly’s success was the result of more than seven years of CrossFit training. The former soccer player for the University of California, Berkeley had followed a long-range multi-year training program he calls “The Plan.”
He first tried CrossFit in 2007 when a friend invited him to San Francisco CrossFit.
“This guy walked up and said, ‘Hi, my name is Kelly Starrett,’” Filly recounted. “Eventually, every single person in the class walked up to me and said, ‘Hi, my name is so-and-so. Nice to meet you, glad you’re here.’ I was like, ‘Man, this is different.’”
The workout—deadlifts and sprints—was held on the beach that day.
“By the end, the bar was buried in the sand, I was pulling it off my shoelaces, I was crushed and I thought, ‘OK, maybe I better pay attention to this CrossFit thing,’” he said.
He kept dropping in to CrossFit San Francisco when time would allow, but that wasn’t often, since he was working to get into medical school. In 2008, he packed up and left the bay for Ohio State University, where he would finish the first year at the top of his class.
Although he was doing well in medical school, he wasn’t happy.
“I was 100 percent depressed and miserable,” Filly recalled. “I hated what I was about. I was not hopeful about my future as a doctor, and I felt like I had a calling that was going to be a little bit different.”
He decided to take a year off to sort things out. As a medical school dropout living in Marin, California, he swept the floor and folded towels at CrossFit San Rafael in exchange for classes, and started to learn everything he could about CrossFit.
“When he walked in, I was like ‘Whoa!’” recalled TJ Belger, owner of the affiliate. “It was immediately apparent, on that very first day, that he was arguably the best CrossFitter we had in our gym at that time. In 2009, he was doing butterfly pull-ups, and doing butterflies in 2009 was a big deal.”
The memory of med school slowly faded as Filly spent his days training and studying functional movements, energy systems, Olympic weightlifting and the CrossFit Level 1 Handbook.
“He really wanted to help people,” Belger said. “He was struggling with the question of how best to help people, through medicine, through CrossFit … . He was in inner turmoil.”
“We started to ask a little more of him,” Belger continued. “We were expanding so rapidly we were tapping people on the shoulder and asking them to coach. Marcus was ravenous, not only to find better ways to train, but also to find better ways to train other people.”
“I remember the day that I was a full coach,” Filly said. “TJ said, ‘Here’s the keys,’ and I was like, ‘Alright, I’m gonna work out all the time!’”
By the time the 2010 CrossFit Games season rolled around, Filly was a top contender for the affiliate team and went on to help it qualify for the Games. Instead of making the trip back to Ohio, he chose Carson, California.
“The bug of competing took hold of our gym,” Belger said. “(Filly) was the best CrossFitter in our gym. In 2011, we were opening our Mill Valley gym, and on the way to regionals we asked him to be a partner. He was an indispensable cog in the machine that we were creating.”
Over the next two years, Filly worked at the affiliate and trained for the affiliate team. He helped the team return to the CrossFit Games in 2011 and 2012, when they had their best finish ever—sixth.
At that point, the team competitors were stoked but burned out. Several teammates retired, and Filly turned his attention to individual competition.
He continued to follow The Plan: three days on, one day off with two workouts per day. In the morning he does cardio work, and in the afternoon he does skill work, weight training or conditioning.
“I love my morning aerobic sessions. I spend more time on the airdyne than most people,” Filly said. “I can sustain levels now that a lot of people can’t do once, and that is purely the product of doing it every day for two years. I love how it builds such great breathing ability.”
Later, he comes back for more.
“The great thing about The Plan is that I don’t practice movements or skills specifically, I practice training different types of energy systems,” he explained. “As it gets closer to regionals and we know the workouts, we just sort of focus in on those movements that I have to be good at and try to create scenarios that get you fatigued in the way that you are going to feel it in the competition.”
He will do the events, but not repeatedly, to avoid repetitive stress and injury.
This year, he likes the look of the regional events.
“There are no movements in the (regional events) that scare me,” he said. “Handstand push-ups, legless rope climbs, handstand walking—those are skills that I have, they’re in my training. But that certainly doesn’t mean I am 100 percent confident for regionals.”
He added: “This is Northern California and there are a dozen guys out there who can do everything and do everything well. It is just a matter of who is going to show up and do it best.”
Last year, Filly’s programming was designed to get him to the regional, and nothing more, so going to the Games was an unexpected adventure in short-term programming.
“It was kind of surreal,” he remembered. “It was something that I maybe envisioned happening a year or two later, not that year. It was kind of a shock.”
This year, he has had to change his mindset, “to believe that I was really a top athlete,” he said.
Belger has noticed the difference.
“This year he has been so relaxed, so confident he is training the way he should be,” Belger said. “All the rinky-dink injuries are gone, he knows his gears, he knows his percentages of effort, he knows all the responses of his body. He’s not worrying about what he’s doing, he’s just doing it.”
Heading into the NorCal Regional as the third-ranked man behind Khalipa and Maddox, he’s determined to qualify for the second year in a row.
“The world needs to watch him on that final regional (event),” Belger said. “He could do something really special on that.”
