040: How Men Can Achieve Their Best Health After 40, with Marc “Funk” Roberts

Over 40 is jokingly called “over the hill” by some people but not our guest! Marc “Funk” Roberts knows personally and professionally how men can achieve their best health after 40.

Marc is the owner of Funk Roberts Fitness Inc., and The Over 40 Alpha Brotherhood. He co-authored the book ‘Rapid Body Makover’. He’s also a former professional beach volleyball player, certified MMA conditioning coach, a certified master metabolic trainer and he’s in the best shape of his life at 50 today!

On this episode of Awesome Health Podcast, we’re talking about men over 40 being their healthiest: increasing their testosterone, losing weight and getting into peak physical and mental health naturally through mindset, nutrition and proper recovery.

If you think you have low testosterone levels like Marc did when he first started this journey, he recommends talking to your doctor first, get a test and see where your testosterone levels are at first.

Then he focuses on nutrition and the importance of good fats, protein and which carbs to include in your testosterone-raising diet. One thing he recommends is having 40% carbs, 40% fats and 20% protein on your plate – and lots and lots and lots of vegetables.

He also tells us what type of workouts will help: he recommends fat-burning activities like HIIT workouts or kettlebell exercises. He explains how to do your reps and how to build in proper recovery into your workout and after because recovery is equally important to raise your testosterone levels as is exercise itself. Funk delves into the science behind this and also the need for quality sleep.

You’ll hear those topics plus some inspiring stories from his Over 40 Alpha group when you join us on episode 40 of Awesome Health Podcast with Marc “Funk” Roberts!

Episode Resources

• Funk Roberts Fitness Website
• Over 40 Website
• Over 40 on Instagram
• Rapid Body Makeover

Read The Episode Transcript :

Wade Lightheart: Good afternoon. Good morning and good evening, wherever you are. I'm Wade T Lightheart from the Awesome Health Podcast and I am excited and delighted today because we've got Mark, I say the Funk, it's Funk Roberts. But I like to think the Funk, cause I, I'm a big fan of the Funk, but we've talked to Roberts later or earlier this year. I was actually on his podcast and I was so impressed with what he's doing. I wanted to get into it today. Basically we're gonna talk today about health and fitness for men over 40 I'm in the over 40 crowd and basically this is helping men increase testosterone levels, lose weight, and get into amazing shape naturally through mindset, nutrition, recovery workers. This is a huge issue, huge, huge issue about men. You get that little belly that doesn't go away no matter what you want and you're not quite feeling yourself and you kinda what's going on.

Wade Lightheart: You know you're not, you know, not gonna note, like used to, don't have the sex drive that you use and you're like, what's going on? Well, I'll tell you what - today we are going to talk about it with Mark. Just so you know, Mark's 50 years old, he runs the over 40 Alpha Brotherhood and we need more alphas, that's for sure. And his mission is to help over a million men in their 40s, 50s and 60s and beyond, regain their manhood, boost testosterone, build the best body and live a healthy, happy and productive life. Of course. Now here's the thing, Mark's going to tell us about his, I want to hear about his story. He had a story where he was went from 215 lbs to 185 lbs, we're going to find out about that low testosterone being overweight. He overcame that and he's going to share that.
 
Wade Lightheart: So he's not just someone that is talking to you, he's talking with you because he's been there, done that. He's a former professional beach volleyball player, certified MMA conditioning coach, a certified master metabolic trainer, creator of the over 40 Alpha Membership, co-author of the "Rapid Body Makeover”, created over a hundred fitness programs and eBooks, DVDs, follow along workouts you wouldn't believe it. And he works with the UFC, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and athletes and fighters relations and writes articles for MMA, BJJ and Muay Thai magazines, online fitness websites. And it's part of the Onnit Academy. Wow. Amazing. This is really good. Well you live in Toronto? That's my town that I was actually born in. Mark, it's great to have you on the show. Welcome
 
Funk Roberts: Thanks man. It's Funk actually. Funk, Funk Roberts. Mark is my born name, but the world knows me as Funk.
 
Funk Roberts: Thank you so much for allowing me to be on the show. I'm excited. Yeah, I'm excited to spread the gospel of a fitness for men over 40. So thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
 
Wade Lightheart: So so here's the thing. I think there's a crisis going on in our society today. I was looking at some data on earlier this year and if you take men at any age group compared to men in the 70s there's a 30% average. This is the average testosterone drop compared to any age. So what that means is 20 year old men today have a testosterone levels of 60 year old men in the 70s. And the reality is for most of us, the time we hit 40, that decline is real. It's tangible. Tell me about that. Tell our listeners about what does that first, how does that show up? What does it look like? How does a person feel? And maybe some of your own personal stories that you have or your clients.
 
Funk Roberts: Yeah. You know, so yeah, testosterone is at the lowest it's ever been in modern day history period. Our grandfathers had more testosterone than we did back in, you know, way back in the day. So not, it's not just men over 40, but that's, you know, men man, period. And it's crazy to me to think that with the advancements of medicine, technology information, that testosterone is so low. But it also doesn't surprise me because when I look at how society perceives testosterone, like they think about big, bulky bodybuilders and you're a douchebag and you know, that's like, that's the mindset of what testosterone hasn't even met us. Men, when we think about testosterone, we're thinking about being big and bulky and, and that's totally cool. That's just a slim sliver of what testosterone is. Testosterone is our number one growth. Number one male hormone.
 
Funk Roberts: It is everything for us. When you have low testosterone, you're going to see belly fat. The number one thing I see whenever I see a man walking around with belly fat, I know number one, he's got low testosterone, probably high estrogen levels. So you know, low belly fat you know, obviously your sex drive is going to be low or tell the dysfunction happens. Your mood is going to be low. You're going to have you know, fatigue. You're always going to be tired. It's very hard to build muscle when your testosterone levels are low. Depression happens during that time. A lot of health ailments, he gets sick a lot. Your immune system down, your everything, bone loss, everything, memory, everything that you think as a male, I'm going to start talking about the men in their forties fifties sixties that you think is related to getting old is actually related to your testosterone levels being low and when we're younger, even though the testosterone levels are still low on average for younger guys, they still have higher testosterone levels, so they can still kind of get away with it.
 
Funk Roberts: But as we get older, specifically when we hit 40 50 60 and beyond, we cannot get away with it. And if we're not doing any things to help naturally boost our testosterone through eating and you know the type of workouts that we do and the recovery and the sleep, then we're going to start, we're going to continue to live this way. And it's not just testosterone, but it's also the other hormones that we need to keep at bay. Like cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone that we do need a little bit of it, but too much of it will kill our testosterone production. Estrogen is a female hormone and yes, we do need a little bit of it but not too much. Again, you'll see it in belly fat, you'll see it in, in, in the man boobs and you'll also see it in low testosterone.
 
Funk Roberts: You've got to keep our insulin levels of balance. We have to keep, you know, our thyroid, you know, we need to keep that high. So the metabolism keeps going and you know, and even though this is not a hormone inflammation, that's really key. We got to keep that down. So as much as testosterone was our superhero, he's our Superman that makes us Superman. Superman has villains, heroes have villains, cortisol, estrogen and insulin, you know, inflammation, thyroid and others are out there. But so we have to think, okay, we've got to start to change the mindset. Like, okay, I need to focus on testosterone. Because once you focus on increasing your testosterone, boosting your testosterone naturally, then the belly fat goes away, then you lose weight, then you build the muscle, then you have energy, then your mood is better, then your depression is going down.
 
Funk Roberts: Then your health is much better. Your whole life completely changes when you think you couldn't change. It completely changes. And again that's what, you know, I call this a feminizing society, you know like suppressing testosterone, suppressing being a man. The diets out there are very feminized. You know a lot of the things are obviously marketing companies, women buy more nutrition plans and diets and fitness stuff. So you're going to push it out there, but that's what's out there. So when you see it you're like 'oh, let me go jump on this diet or low fat or low carb or let me try keto and all of these diets that don't support our hormones are always being pushed'. And your wife's telling you 'Oh, become a vegetarian or do that'. It's like whatever it is. But it's like we need to focus, move back and focus on testosterone.
 
Funk Roberts: That's, that's the number one thing. Once we have that focus and once we understand what testosterone does to our bodies and how, again, the byproduct will be that lean, ripped abs. I mean, I just had a guy who was on my, on my Over 40 Alpha Brotherhood, that's what we call it. He was just on my podcast, cause I also get them on my podcast to go through their stories. And his story was he was 300 pounds and at 300 pounds, he wanted to see his abbs. That was his number one goal. And he would tell people around them and they'd be like, there's no way it's going to happen, but okay, whatever went through the program continues to go through the program and now I see this abs. And it wasn't all about like, you know, weight loss, weight loss, weight loss.
 
Funk Roberts: It was testosterone being at the forefront of everything. So you know, just to back up again, it's just, you know, the suppression of being a man, testosterone being bad villain when it's our, our hero and you know, just, just settling with, settling with, okay, well I'm 40 years old or 50 years old and this is the way it's supposed to be. So, you know, I'm just going to deal with it.
 
Wade Lightheart: That's a great point that you bring up. This is, I see this so often. This is just an accepted decline and I don't know how this mentalities like creeped into society, but the reality is, is I think it's important for us to say, no, we don't have to accept that. What was your own journey? We're going to get into specifics, but how did you come to this yourself? I'm curious to how this happened. Cause I'm looking at you and I'm like, this guy is a total badass man. He's like kicks butt, takes names, how is it that a guy like you would have your own journey about that.
 
Funk Roberts: Oh, man, I've had two journeys actually. So you know, like I said, I used to be a professional beach volleyball and indoor volleyball player. For many years I was always athletic, but one of the things I always had was a belly because I used to drink a lot and party a lot. So, you know, you cannot train a bad diet, so it doesn't matter. You're still gonna have it. But I was always jacked. But after I retired, you know, I got the 9 to 5 and I had kids and you know, you're just kinda like living the home life and trying to get your career going. And so as, as you know, you're sitting in front of a computer 10, 12 hours a day started to eat.
 
Funk Roberts: I still went to the gym. I even did bootcamps. I ran bootcamps. I had personal training on the side. I was even posting videos on YouTube. But when I reached 39, something happened. Like I was, I was working out six days a week. I was doing 45 minutes of cardio, you know, the stair climber, what have you, I wasn't, I was thought I was eating well, like I didn't eat carbs and fats. Eating fats wasn't even a thing 10 years ago. Like, it wasn't. Like, it wasn't like, well, you need healthy fats at this. Don't eat fat. So it's kind of like what it was about 10, 11 years ago. So that's what was going on. And you know, I started to my mood started to go down. I started getting more depressed. My girlfriend left me because I couldn't and literally left me because I couldn't satisfy her in bed.
 
Funk Roberts: That's literally the reason why she left. Like, you're not giving me sex, man, so I can't help. Like, you know, I gotta leave you. And so all of that started to play and here I am posting videos on YouTube, trying to be, you know, on the big fitness guy and I can't even take care of myself. I was 215 pounds. I was puffy out of shape and I didn't know what was going on. So I went to the doctors, you know, just to figure, I think I went to doctors for the depression and then we just took, took blood and he told me the age, testosterone was super low. Him, how can that be? I'm big and jacked. How come I just saw some levels below like, nah man, they're really, really low. He right away wanted to write a script for testosterone replacement there.
 
Funk Roberts: And I'm like, no man, I can't, I'm not going to do that. I need to, you know, I need to figure out what's going on. So I started to research and see what's happening to the bodies at 40. And there was a lot of information out there. There still isn't a lot of information out there to tell you the truth for men over 40. But I started to dig and talk to a hormone specialist and, and a nutritionist and found that okay, the nutrition that I'm, that I have right now is not working. I got to eat more fats, eat more carbs, cause that's what's going to help with the sauce from them. We'll get into that later. My workouts have to change. I was doing the buys and tries back and shoulders. I moved to more metabolic and you can see this whole transformation on my YouTube page.
 
Funk Roberts: You know, trying to get more sleep, you know, getting rid of the alcohol, cause I even started doing drugs, you know, parties so much. I have to get rid of all of that. And once I did that, literally six months later, completely changed what to one 85 I finally had abs cause I never had OBS even though I was lean and I was ripped and I was feeling great. And and then I just started to post more metabolic workouts. I didn't really talk more about being 40 because at that time I still thought I was 20. Right? Oh I'm 40 but I'm really 20 cause I went to Thailand and I fought Muay Thai cause I was also a professional Muay Thai before. So, you know, my mindset in my early forties was I'm still 20, I'm still 30.
 
Funk Roberts: So that whole 40 year old thing didn't come into play until 40. I think I was 47 years old, 48 years old. I came down with what's called cryptogenic organizing pneumonia, which is a lung disorder that's very rare. And I had it and the doctors had no clue what it was. So basically what it is like I couldn't breathe. Like I was having a hard time breathing, walking up the stairs. I would be out of breath to the point where I would go 10 feet to the washroom and I would literally take a minute to recover from just getting up and walking to the washroom. So to make a long story short, the doctors put me into the hospital because they had no clue what it was and they were like, listen, if you're going to die, you might as well die here. Everyone was starting to like, this is this, is it?
 
Funk Roberts: Like no one knows what it is. And they realized it was cryptogenic organizing pneumonia. Well, in order to combat that, they put me on Prednisone and I'm a very high dosage oven. If you guys don't know what this is, the catabolic steroid, which is a prescription that destroys your testosterone, destroys your hormones, hot flashes, moods like you burn, you build, get fat belly fat, put on weight. It's a horrible thing to be on, but it saved my life. At the same time, I really dove into my program, like the nutrition, the, the testosterone, boosting nutrition. I was still working out as best as I could because you know, I was getting better in regards to my lungs so I could work out more. But I was using those types of workouts. I was getting more sleep that just came with the fact that I was on Prednisone, I was getting more sleep, I was literally living my Over 40 Alpha program while I was on Prednisone.
 
Funk Roberts: And then when I came off Prednisone, my testosterone levels both while I was on, it was like at 9, there's a reading between 9 and 27, to start when I was about 9 or 10 and when I came off I was like high 30ies, early low 40ies and the doctor's like, what the hell? Like this is like three months after I came off of Prednisone. So I'd already been doing my program, eating well, trying to combat all of the side effects. And then two months, three months later I go to the doctor again. He's like, this is unbelievable. How can you have this much testosterone? I'm like, well this is what I was doing throughout. So after I was done, it just kicked in. And that's when I, that's when I realized that's when I got the aha moment that, okay, this is this, this works, this is for this. Now I need to help men over 40 now I need to help us guys in our 40ies 50ies 60ies to focus more on testosterone. Because the byproduct is a lean body. A byproduct is more energy, better mood, better sex life. I mean, you're living like you're in your twenties.
 
Wade Lightheart: So what were the things that you were doing and what are the things that you teach for people when they're, you know, cause there's so many guys that have low testosterone, by the way, if you're listening to this podcast, go out, talk to your MD doctor, get a test and see where you're at. Just if you're not feeling yourself, you find yourself storing body fat. Like, look, you need to get out of the whatever zone that you're in. You need to get hard data because when you see those numbers and look at it, I'll call that. That's the come to Jesus moment, but then, then you can't kind of like pass it off and, and I think men are just naturally "you know, I'm just down a little bit. It's okay". And years go by and you're suffering and you don't need to suffer.
 
Wade Lightheart: And one of the interesting things when you have low testosterone, oftentimes you don't want to take action for yourself cause you've got, I'm doing career, I'm doing family, I'm doing all these other things and you've kind of written it off while I'm on, I don't have that sex drive anymore cause I, I'm doing the dad thing or I'm doing the career thing or whatever. You indicated that. And I see that very common in the conversations when people have low testosterone. So get a test, get it figured out, start getting the data right now. So what did you do and what do you recommend?
 
Funk Roberts: Yeah. So what I did was first first of all, the mindset, you know, just, just that's always my number one thing is kind of like, okay, I've got low testosterone. Now I'm gonna focus on testosterone. I want to focus on everything to do. So, you know, no matter what, what happens, whether I don't feel like going to the gym or whether I don't feel like eating something, I have to, I've gotta get testosterone. I literally became obsessed with testosterone. So I'm gonna start with nutrition because that was a key for me. That's the key for everything. You cannot train a bad diet. So the nutrition plan for someone who wants to boost testosterone needs to be it's totally different from what you're thinking or what not, what you're thinking about, what your readers are probably thinking listeners are probably thinking.
 
Funk Roberts: So just in order to understand testosterone is produced in the morning late at night in the morning is produced from the pituitary to your testicles. And the precursor to testosterone production is cholesterol. Okay. Good cholesterol. That's very important to understand because if you don't have cholesterol, good cholesterol getting to your body through your body, then your testosterone production is not even there. You need that production. So in nutrition, when you're looking at the macronutrients, macronutrients are carbs, fats, proteins. You're looking at fats being the most important macronutrient when it comes to boosting testosterone in your diet. Because like I said, when you have healthy, you know, the saturated fats, the mono and saturated fats, those are two. You want to stay with the polyunsaturated and the trans fats you want to stay away from, but that those two have the, the, the cholesterol, the good cholesterol that's needed to help production testosterone production.
 
Funk Roberts: So when you're, you know, eating avocados and you know, olive oil and, and you know, nuts and that sort of thing, that's, that's really, that's huge. So every time you have a plate of food, there should be a healthy fat, grass fed butter, whatever. The second one is carbs. Carbs are super, super, super, super important. Once again, you see all these diets out there. Low carb, don't eat carb, whatever it is. You need carbs, but with carbs, there's two types of carbs. There's simple carbs and complex carbs. A lot of people get mixed up with simple, good or complex good. What I do is I say simple starts with S - sugar starts with S, so simple sugar - bad, complex - good. That's all like that. That's how I started knowing that and the complex carbs are when your body doesn't have carbs, there's a few things that happen.
 
Funk Roberts: The first thing is our bodies need carbs for energy, and so if we don't have, I'm just going to do this to say this and - you don't have it, then your body shuts, starts to go into starvation mode. Everything, everything that happens, your body slows down. Your mind go 'shit, I'm not getting any carbs'. I'm not getting energy. Okay, I'm going to slow down production, maybe even stop production cause I'm going to slow down my metabolism. I'm going to take that fat and I'm going to store in the stomach so that I have it for later. And that protein that you're feeding me, I'm going to use that for energy. I'm going to use that protein. So everything is totally, you know, when you think, Oh, I'm not going to eat carbs, the whole body's shutting down as well as the thyroid starts to shut down as well, which is a metabolism which I told you guys need to increase your thyroid.
 
Funk Roberts: Your energy levels naturally go down whenever going to low carb diet, you always feel your energy levels are down. You have no motivation, your body needs carbs, but it's the right carbs. So eating things like, you know, sweet potato, steel cut oats, white wild rice, brown rice, you know quinoa, that sort of thing. That's important. So again, when you look at your plate, there has to be a source of carbs. Proteins are important because we need a source of protein with everything that we eat because we don't naturally produce protein. We need an outside source of protein, but it's not the most important. Specifically in our forties fifties sixties when you're younger and everything that you read tells you protein, protein, protein, protein. But again, it's important. It's the foundation of our nutrition. But it's not the most important.
 
Funk Roberts: Too much proteins got the thermic effect of food, which means your body takes time to digest and synthesize protein, which is good to a degree. But when you're eating protein for breakfast and then snack, and then dinner, and then lunch, and throughout the day, that that causes a lot of stress. Cortisol, because the body's working, working, working, working. And instead of it being effective, your cortisol levels start to rise. And cortisol is a villain of testosterone, which means testosterone production goes down. So although protein is important but it's not the most important, so when you look at a plate and then, and then of course, you know, veggies, fruits should be part of it. So when you look at a plate of food, you're looking at a plate and a ratio. The ratio, and this is the ratio I start with. Obviously it's going to fluctuate depending on whether you want more fat loss or more muscle growth.
 
Funk Roberts: But 40% carbs, 40% protein, sorry, 40% carbs, 40% fats, 20% proteins, and a ton of vegetables, tons and tons of vegetables. Your plate, I call these my balance plates and that makes it very easy for my men. They eat three times a day - lunch, breakfast, dinner, sorry, breakfast, lunch, dinner, three times a day. Every plate looks kind of like, you know, if they look at up here, I actually run a troll through a picture. If you look at this, I know you guys are who are not watching. It's like 40% fats, 40% carbs, proteins and vegetables. And if your plate is broken down like this, every time you eat, you know, okay, I've got carbs, I've got fats, I don't, we don't calorie count, I don't. And literally it, I have them choose. Or what I did was I chose from a list, right? So here are the good carbs.
 
Funk Roberts: Here are the three carbs I'm going to eat this week. Here are the three fats I'm gonna eat this week. They're the three proteins. Make it super simple and sustainable. So that made it very easy for me. The nutrition part became the easiest part of it because it was just was simple meal prep, have everything there and this was to start small, start to boost. The second, the second thing I did was the workouts. So I changed my workouts from bodybuilding style workouts, which were, you know, a bi's and tri's, back and shoulders, that sort of thing because it was getting really, I was getting injured a lot. It was too much volume for my body. And as we get older when you do three total body workouts you know, three total body workouts per week, you're going to get better results in regards to fat loss, burning fat building muscle than you would doing, you know, the breaking down from muscle, right?
 
Funk Roberts: Cause that's what we want at first. We want to burn as much body fat. You know, testosterone production happens much better when your body fights down to 14% or lower. Not, not that we were going to go from 30 to 14% in 30 days, but the lower your body fat is the more production of testosterone you're going to have. So you want to get your body fat down by doing total body workouts. And at that point I was just doing body weight, dumbbell training, kettlebell training. That's it. And they're all metabolic. And when I say metabolic it's like hit training. But they weren't, I mean for me I could still do burpees and a lot of stuff cause I was pretty athletic. But for a lot of guys in their 40s, 50s, 60s, that's not a reality. Like doing jump squats and doing all that stuff.
 
Funk Roberts: So joint friendly but still you want total body workouts, compound movements, multi joint movements using dumbbells, kettlebells, you know a change in the workouts really helped with growth hormones with testosterone and not only burning fat during or burning calories during the workout, but also because when you're doing metabolic training, you get the after burn effect, right. Epic. Which allows you to burn fat or sorry, burn calories, you know, 24 hours after depending on, you know, how, how hard or how intense it was. So my workouts were really key to adding the nutrition. And then with the mindset nutrition workouts, I finally added recovery, more recovery, more focused on sleep. That was huge for me. Sleep was massive. It still is today. I wear this, I don't get sponsored by these guys, but I wear a WHOOP strap because that strap is the, has an app and it talks about my recovery and my sleep.
 
Funk Roberts: How much sleep did I get last night? Because even though I was in bed for eight hours, I may only got five hours good sleep, right. And that we need a lot. We need seven to nine hours to get, you know, maximum testosterone production right for the cause. Remember testosterone is produced in the morning. So you need that REM sleep, you need that really good sleep so that you're just awesome productions at a high, high level. But when you're not sleeping, you know, you're just, you're hampering that right and then your cortisol is up so sleep was huge for me. Listen, that's one thing that we can affect right away. You know, we can sleep better and you're going to see less belly fat. You're going to see less body fat right off the bat.
 
Funk Roberts: Obviously not going to get shredded. But that's a huge, huge for energy and everything else. And the other thing was just more recovery stuff. Like, you know, I was doing more cryotherapy and I was floating and I was doing yoga. Like a lot of things, because I want it, I want to be able to work out like this three to four days a week for the rest of my life. Like 40, 50, 60, 70, 80. And the only way to do that is to make sure that your joints and your body is recovering the way it should be. I had to back off on the workouts - no longer it was a six days a week. It was more like four days a week. Right? And those recovery days were huge because I would come back ready, hungry to work out, right? And then I would recover and I found myself "Hey man, I've been working out straight every week for a year. Like that's never happened before because I would always be injured. I got a shoulder injury or whatever. This is because of the recovery, the nutrition, like all of it put together". But the biggest thing is that's what affects my testosterone. Now, my testosterone you know, on a high level production's great. And my body's like, it was when I was in my twenties. That's amazing.
 
Wade Lightheart: That's a, that's an amazing story. And I think that's, I see a lot of people, particularly in the fitness industry too, that are used to that five and six day workout routines. You know, the body part training, the classical stuff, and then switching to those three body workouts a week. When you're doing that when the body workouts, what was the focus of those particularly. Like did you pick one that would be more dominant? Just tell me the structure, those workouts that you tend to promote.
 
Funk Roberts: So a good one would be Dumbo. So if I was doing total body Dumbo workout, probably start, so I do it for time. So 45 seconds of work followed my 15 seconds rest one after the other. So start off with a goblet squats with a dumbbell, boom. You do that as many times as you can for 45 seconds, rest for 15 and then I move on to bent-over dumbbell rows. So bent-over rows with two dumbbells in my hand to hit the box. So first I hit this lower body that I hit the back. After those 45 seconds, I'll either jump on a bench or if I'm at home, I'll jump on the floor and do chest press, boom, boom.
 
Funk Roberts: You know, and you're doing as many reps as you possibly can. You're also, I'm also challenging myself with the, with the weight. I'm not using 20 pounds the whole time. I'm, you know, grabbing, okay, I'm going to try forties you know, and go for 45 seconds. And then if I have to drop them and go to thirties, I will. And then from there I'd moved to maybe bicep curls or some type of a curl variation. Then I would do 45 seconds of my tricep exercise and then finish off with 45 seconds of a shoulder exercise and then an app. And that would be one round. So that round would take seven minutes, rest for a minute and do that three times. So I'm in and out of the gym in 25 minutes. Amazing. Of course you have a warm up and, and you have a warmup and a stretch afterwards.
 
Funk Roberts: But that workout in itself is, is very intense because again, I'm always challenging myself with weight, right? Even though I'm going as fast as I can, I, I'm not, I'm not going slow. This is not about slow. It's about burning as much. The, the work intensity has to be a little bit higher. But when you do that for 25 minutes, you're done. You're done. You know what I mean? You're done. And that's, that's one with dumbbells, you can do the same type of setup with just body weight or with kettlebells, but that's kind of the, the metabolic workouts that I prescribed to you, cause you don't have to worry about, you know, counting reps and a lot of times people worry about counting reps. They don't focus on the intensity of the exercise or am I doing this right? You know, or the mind muscle connection.
 
Funk Roberts: It's all about reps - one, two, three. When there's a time limit, you're all focusing on is okay, make sure you can feel the chest, you know, mind over my head. That's the kind of things that go through your mind or I just gotta get through this. This is hurting me. You know what I mean? Mental toughness. Yeah, totally. No, I think that's a really big thing. Okay. So then you got a dumbbell workout. What's another one that you might throw in there? So maybe I'll do every minute on the minute type thing where I'll do, you know, kettlebell swings and burpees. So I may do 10 kettlebell swings and six burpees, right? And then every minute you start off for 50 minutes, every minute you start off with six, the 10 kettlebell swings, heavy kettlebell swings to get that power and explosiveness and athletic.
 
Funk Roberts: And then, you know, I would finish off with burpees, the total body metabolic work is tough. Love them man, I love them. That's like my, I'm known for, I'm the burpee king. I'm known for burpees. So and then after that, as fast as you do that, you rest. And so let's say I did both those exercises in 30 seconds, I would get the rest for 30 seconds or because I'm a fighter, I may, you know, shadow box for 20 seconds of that 30 seconds and then boom, hit it again. 10 kettlebell swings, six burpees and do them as fast as I can. So as you know, you want to try to finish up, if you did it in 30 seconds, the first round, you want to try to do it in 30 seconds in the fifth, 15th round. Cause you're doing it for 15 minutes. Obviously it's hard to do that because you're tired, you're fatigued. But again, it's just, it's just getting getting an efficient amount of work done. Total body work done in a short period of time. So you're not spending all that time in a gym and you can warm up and stretch and you know, do anything OB and core afterwards to get the core and abs. You know, that's another big thing for me - I've been core strength as well.
 
Wade Lightheart: That's really great. I think that's some really savvy advice. And I think a lot of guys, you know, especially the gym rats like us, we want to continue to grind away. Like you said, thinking like I'm 20. And you have to think like a 40 year old. And, and I also liked the way you divided up the plate into the 40, 40 and 20 I'm assuming what the other veggies, that's like the cruciferous vegetables.
 
Funk Roberts: So for me it's spent, I eat a lot of spinach, salads, you know, asparagus, whatever. But that you can eat a ton of like that's.
 
Wade Lightheart: Yeah, your plate should be more of that than anything. And the cruciferous vegetables also have a positive effect on lowering estrogen levels as well. Well the thing with nutrition too is, sorry, I should have mentioned this.
 
Funk Roberts: Well, when I teach nutrition, I teach them about the micronutrients. I don't really teach about the macros. The macros is what sets up the ratio. But unless you understand what the micronutrients that each of these foods have and how they play in your hormones, like selenium and magnesium and zinc. You know, vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin B you know, those are micronutrients that are getting in the foods that you're eating that will boost your testosterone.
 
Wade Lightheart: It's really important, particularly zinc that syncs selenium, combination with almost everybody's deficient in those. And though that's a really important for, you know, jacking up luteinizing hormone, which activise testosterone levels right there. Right. and you talked about recovery things, cryo yoga and floating a level. Those are, you want to talk, explain how do you work yoga in particularly? Is there any particular style or type that you like?
 
Funk Roberts: Yeah. I love it. So we, I actually partnered with a friend of mine who's a yogi. Ushe does, they're very, I can't remember what it's called, but I asked her to actually create a yoga style because what was happening was I would go to yoga class at the gym and I would go in the back and there would be like,uit just be too fast for me to keep up. But I still went because I could, for me, I like to see my transformation or, you know, I want to see myself get better. So I still went, but you know, for me it was like, okay, well this is, this is great and everything. And then I partnered with her and said, you know, can you create these yoga flows for my guys?
 
Funk Roberts: And again, they were like 30 moves and there's 30 minutes and it was very hard for most men at 40, 50, 60, I've never done yoga or maybe they did it 30, 20 years ago. But yoga it's so important. It's amazing for the meditation and breathing and just balance and core strength and you know, flexibility and mobility. So I asked her to just do 15 minute yoga flows using five moves only. And that's in doing those moves over and over again. And so I do them at home. I do those if it's a full body stretch or if it's a back release or if it's a, you know hip mobility. Those are, that's what I do. So there's no real name to it. It's just the flows that that she is used to.
 
Funk Roberts: But I asked her to kind of like make it, these guys love it because it's only 15 minutes. So that's the key. And I have them do it on a, on their off days. I say, okay, this is your rest day, but let's do a yoga flow on this rest day. Or you know, here's a bonus on Saturdays. I like these guys to do something else, like an active rest day, go out, go for a walk, play sport that you love. What's happening with a lot of these guys in, in 40 Alpha Program is like they're falling back in love with sports or activities that they love to do because now they can do it right. And so for me it's the same thing. Like Muay Thai is huge for me. I'm 50 years old, I'm going to be going to Thailand in April and I'm going to train and probably fight in Thailand. But I can't do that unless I have yoga. That's huge for me cause I need the recovery, I need my cardio and conditioning. So I use my hit training. Nutrition is huge because of inflammation and of course just lowering my, my body fat you know, fueling my workouts, helping my recovery and then you know, training more time. Training with these young cats.
 
Wade Lightheart: Beautiful. A couple of things. I'd like to touch with you in regards to this and the recovery modalities and cryo and floating. I live literally 600 feet away from a float place and it's a five minute walk from my full body cryo down here in Venice at full about. And I know there's another fellow we've had on the podcast, Jason Farrugia and he talks about cryo. He has all of his older guys that come in do 30 days straight of cryo to remove the inflammatory markers. You just go cryo every day and then you can just kinda maintain after that. What's been your experience with those who don't know? You go into a kind of a stand up, almost like a tanning bed and there's some that have your head open and now they have the new ones with the head closed.
 
Wade Lightheart: I go to Bulletproof labs down here in Venice beach, which is great. They got the full body head in, takes you down to a boat, they use nitrogen that takes you down to them in the mid minus 200. So two 20 to two 40 and you're in there for three minutes. They put socks. And, and sand things on. He put gloves and, and, and little things on your ears so you don't get frostbite and it's extremely invigorating. But what it does for inflammation is incredible. What's been your experience with cryo and what got you into it and how does it fit in for somebody that's maybe going down this route?
 
Funk Roberts: Yeah, so for me, cryo was good for my posts when I was training a Muay Thai or training MMA or training, you know, because the day again, you take the damage, you take the, the constant like, you know, kicks or punches or whatever, the inflammation is just going to happen. So for me it was, okay, what's the best, what are some of the ways I can do it? Well, when I'm in Thailand, it's a nice bath. That's what we do because that's just kind of, you know, you go to the ice bath and you jump in it, but you know, here in Toronto, would you stay in an ice bath anyway? It's just like 30 seconds out for like two minutes and then for 30 seconds out for two, three minutes. There's guys in there do it for a minute, but I'm just, I'm just listening.
 
Funk Roberts: I'm, I just want to get, I just want to resolve. I'm not into passing. I'm not trying to break record. There are guys who go because it's in a public place and there's a lot of crossfitters go to this place in Thailand. So they go in and they try to like beat each other and I'm like, nah, man, I'm good with that. But here we don't have ice pass. You know, available like we do there. So yeah, for me it's just the cryo helped with getting that inflammation, getting my recovery a lot quicker you know, going to cost money, so constantly doing it over and over again along with all the other stuff. You know, it's just time, time consuming and cost, but it's very good. Like I don't do it as much as I used to. I do floating more. I don't do the cryo as much as I as I used to, but I may start back because now I'm back into a full tree. Live in Toronto. You can just walk outside and get it. I could literally just walk outside and have my own Cryo bath.
 
Wade Lightheart: Beautiful. It's great. And I think that's important. Once you kind of get into that zone where you're good, then you can reduce a lot of these things always like turn it up and then get the result and then you kind of maintain, talk about floating to me. Cause what's that been for you? And for those who don't know, floating is really got popular thanks to Joe Rogan talks a lot about it. Yeah. Thanks Joe. But floating has been around for a long time. Frank Zane used to have what he called the insane experience and these are their sensory deprivation tables. You'd go into a float tank. It's a tank that you can kind of go into. Some of them are relatively small, so I like the ones I go to. And Venice is like a walk in. It's like you walk into this. And they put about, you know, 1200 pounds of salt, magnesium, salt in this and you float, you literally get in it and your body is just floats and you've experienced this, this weightlessness, which is extremely relaxing on the nervous system. So yeah, talk to me about floating for you and what it's been, how it's done, how it's worked and all that.
 
Funk Roberts: I mean, floating has been a game changer for me at all aspects of my life, not just, you know, I thought at first when I was going to go, one was going to float, was going to be more for recovery for my body to recover. And I soon realized that, you know, floats are about an hour and a half to two hours and you're in there and literally the brain starts activating. And like, I remember the first time I was in there, I was just before I was about to do a certification, like to create a certification. And I literally felt like I wrote the whole certification inside my brain while I was floating. Like I'd came out feeling incredible. You know, just the body feels good, you feel rejuvenated. My mind felt great. It's like, it's like you know, way back in the day I used to do ecstasy and that feeling of love and just happiness and energy after you did it.
 
Funk Roberts: I mean, that's the only thing that I can relate it to because I remember when I walked out the first time with my wife, I'm like, man, I feel freaking amazing what that feels so smart. But then there's times when I go in and I'll just fall asleep and there's times when I'll go in and my mind is just really going like all over the place, but my body still feels relaxed, right? My body still feels rested and relaxed even though the mind can play, you know, it's not a negative experience. I always love going there because before I have a big you know, a big project to do, I'll go in and see if, if anything comes out of it for my mind but the body allows me to relax and allows me to chill again. I don't do it as much as I used to before, but you know, when I'm in this mode of, of training for Muay Thai, that's when I add all of these because on a regular basis, you know, as long as I sleep, as long as I have my yoga, as long as I do some mobility work, AB and core do these workouts, nutrition, I'm fine.
 
Funk Roberts: I don't have to add some of these other things. But now that I'm in a place where the intensity of training is very high, I'm 50 years old. So my recovery is not like it. Even though I feel like a super 50 year old man, it's realistically I'm 50, the recovery is not as well as it was when I was in my twenties so I need to add elements like, you know, cryotherapy. If I need to or you know, heading to floating once a week just to speed up the recovery process so that I can continue to train. Because when it boils down to it at this age, it's all about recovery. It's all about, because if you can't recover, then you won't be able to train. You won't be able to work out, you won't be able to stay strong.
 
Funk Roberts: If you can recover, the more you can recover, the more you can sustain your workouts without injury, without you know, breaking down. And that's what you want. You want us to exercise for the rest of your life three to four times a week. You want to have that exercise. And then on those other days you want to do mobility stuff. Maybe some admin core stuff, maybe something that you love, but it's all about that recovery. So nutrition is key. Recovery, sleep is key. Anything go if you work at a place that gives you like physiotherapy massage therapy and that sort of thing. Like a lot of places it's, it's part of the package. Oh, you get this much off my sauce. Everybody guide men don't generally use all that stuff. Right? They go, why would I use that? No use and abuse the sh the, I won't swear the crap out of it. Using the abuse, the crap out of it. That's like, that's huge. That's a gold mine for your recovery, going to feel better, you're going to have more energy or disarm levels are going to be you know, invigorated, like use all of that stuff in order to help you with recovery, with feeling better, with mentally being on point with sustainability, with workouts and decreasing injury, using abuse, everything you can when it comes to recovery.
 
Wade Lightheart: I love it. So before we get a wrap up, I'd like for you to kind of talk about this group that you've created that's helping men. So if you've been listening to this podcast and you're like, you know, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to get dialed into this. Tell me about the group and what you're doing out there. I think it's a great thing and I encourage people to get in there and get that support that you need when you're out there, you know, dying in the estrogen wilderness. All right, so tell me about this group, the site, how to get access, all that sort of stuff.
 
Funk Roberts: Yeah, this has been a game changer for myself and for these men. It's called Over 40 Alpha. If you go to over40alpha.com there's a 30 day free trial. But what I've done was I took all the information that I had and I created a membership group over 40 Alpha Brotherhood that has all the pillars I teach, you know, mindset first. Cause that's the number one thing. What is your why, what is going to get you through those tough times? What's going to keep yourself motivated. So that's really the start. Then I teach a nutrition, so very easy to follow nutrition plan that these guys follow. They have workouts follow along workouts that I give them. Fall long workouts and I give them. And then recovery stuff. So the yoga, you know, how to sleep better sleep.
 
Funk Roberts: So basically I call it one year, we call it One Year to Alpha. It's 12 phases. So every phase has follow along workouts that you can do at home, either body weight or dumbbells. So you don't need anything. You don't need to go to the gym. You could just click on play and literally your fault, I'm there with you training with you, struggling with you. So you know, it's like you have a, or you definitely have a coach and a training workout partner. And then so every month you have different, you know, phase one is fat loss, phase two is muscle building because sarcopenia is something that it's a logical, natural loss of muscle. So we got to attack that too. You know, month three is shred. So every month has a different theme. And so every month has workouts.
 
Funk Roberts: Nutrition pretty much stays the same. So we keep that very simple. You just choose from the foods that you want recovery and so on and so forth. We have a support group that this is the game changer. So I just talked to someone you know someone from the group and this is a game changer - the support I do coaching every week. The support that these guys have, it's not just about all look at me lifting 20 pounds more. It's they post their wins, they post their losses, they post their foods, they post things that are happening in their lives. They post pictures of them and their wives. Like it's such a sup and they, people are like meeting up with each other in the UK. Like there's all over the world. It's incredible because it's the only place where men can actually go and feel that they have support.
 
Funk Roberts: You know, one guy had two deaths in one week and he talked about how this program and the fact that he was, you know, had good energy and he was able to get through it, but after the week was over, he needed to dump all that information. He needs to get it out and there was nowhere else he could do it, but in the support group. And we were like, yeah, we hear you. You know, it's amazing. So I get goosebumps when I talk about it because these guys are unbelievable man. It's like you get 40 50 60 year old men just talking to each other and helping each other and motivate each other. And new guys come in and they're like "Oh, you know, I'm kind of cutting down my carbs" and all the other guys will come in:
 
Funk Roberts: "No, don't cut your carbs. You've gotta trust the process". So it's a really good group. And then, you know, they can access everything through an app and, and everything. But the key is the support, right? Like you're gonna come in, you're gonna get 30 days free, over40alpha.com, you're going to come into this group and you're going to know that you have all the support, the workouts are easy to follow, follow along. The nutrition's easy to follow. I'm always there. Every week we do a video coaching calls. So I'm always answering questions in there. I'm always posting. It's a true community. We've got about 3000 men in the brotherhood and about 700 of them are on the Facebook group. I was trying to get them more, but it's unbelievable, man. It's truly a brother who, there's a guy who got a tattoo, an Over40brotherhood tattoo! Amazing.
 
Wade Lightheart: That's super amazing. Mark Roberts, you had to get out of the Funk by getting into the funk. That's right. And we're going to put all the show links in here into the show to go with their checkout. This club, you know what, 30 day free trial. I mean, listen, if people are out there suffering you're not feeling yourself. You feel that body fat creeping up. You're feeling that sex drive going down and you've written it off to family or you've written off to career or getting older responsibilities. Stop that crap. Go talk to the, get out of your Funk, get into this one, join his group and just knock low testosterone out of the sink. Exactly. Give it a nice elbow. A nice knee. There you go. Mark, thanks so much for joining us today.
 
Wade Lightheart: I really appreciate it. You know, it's just a delight to know that you're out there on the, on the ground 3000 guys out there helping, what an impact you're making. And I hope that more people are listening. You know what? Put your ego aside. Click on that link. It'll be the best decision you ever made. Thank you so much.
 
Funk Roberts: I appreciate being on the show. I appreciate all of your listeners and watchers, and I appreciate you, Wade. You're amazing. Thank you so much for giving me this platform. I appreciate it.