Today, we dive into weight maintenance and recovery with our special guest Jeff Hoehn. Jeff brings a wealth of experience in nutrition and training, shedding light on the importance of managing fatigue and living at maintenance, which is often overlooked or misunderstood.  We share evidence-based strategies for long-term success in sustaining fat loss and maintaining strength as you age.

Jeff, the owner of JH Health & Fitness, transformed his own physique through various building and fat loss phases, bodybuilding competitions, and injury rehab. As a knowledgeable online coach, Jeff empowers his clients with both skills and knowledge for sustainable progress. I invited Jeff, a fellow curious learner and host of The Mind Muscle Connection podcast, to share his insights and strategies from interviewing experts on his show and years of hands-on experience.

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Today you’ll learn all about:

[3:17] Jeff's motivation and vision for fitness coaching and podcasting
[7:29] Coaching values
[11:11] Weight maintenance and sustaining body composition
[13:29] Challenges with weight maintenance
[21:24] Differences between maintenance and fat loss phases
[23:06] Set point theory and its impact on weight maintenance
[26:08] Addressing metabolic adaptation after a fat loss phase
[32:13] Lisa credits Philip's coaching for her 17-lb weight loss and gives him a grateful shout-out
[32:57] Importance of tracking during weight maintenance
[36:44] Strategies for addressing weight fluctuations
[40:30] Determining readiness to train and recovery status
[42:28] The importance of and factors affecting recovery
[44:55] Role of rest days and deloads in programming
[47:22] Volume, intensity, frequency, and exercise selection in recovery
[51:27] Non-training factors that influence recovery, including age and gender
[56:49] Personal approach to recovery and overcoming setbacks
[1:00:04] Influential podcast guests and personal relationships
[1:02:07] Memorable feedback from podcast listeners or clients
[1:04:13] Jeff's favorite sport
[1:05:34] How to connect with Jeff

Episode resources:

• Jeff's podcast: The Mind Muscle Connection 

• Instagram: @ jeffhoehn_

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Transcript

Jeff Hoehn  00:00

As you get older, I think it's important to really get your execution and technique and everything dialed in. Because, you know, again, when you're younger you can get away with like, hey, if your forms off a little bit, it's no big deal like, you're going to be fine. Whereas as you get older, you have all that wear and tear of everything else that you did for years.

 

Philip Pape  00:18

Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Welcome to another episode of Wits & Weights. Today we're gonna dive into two important topics, weight maintenance and recovery with my special guest, Jeff hain, who has tons of hands on tons of coaching experience with both nutrition and training and lots of other topics. Living it maintenance, managing fatigue, managing recovery, I think they're often overlooked. They're misunderstood by many people who want to improve their body composition. And I think Jeff's going to reveal why they're relevant. If you care about the long game, in terms of sustaining that hard won fat loss, and being able to train into your later years, among other things. And as always, on this show, we're going to share evidence based strategies that you can take action on starting today. Jeff has gone through his own personal transformation through several building and fat loss phases. He's completed in bodybuilding shows, he's tried just about every diet, every training method out there, he's dealt with injuries and rehab and through it all learned about the science and practice of human performance and nutrition. Jeff is the owner of Jay H health and fitness. He's also an online coach who helps clients get leaner stronger and more confident. He believes and I couldn't agree more that coaching is a collaborative process where clients should be empowered, empowered with knowledge empowered with skills. I invited Jeff on because I'm a huge fan of his podcast, the mind muscle connection, and I can relate to his self experimentation, his curiosity for learning. On his podcast, Jeff interviews, well known experts like Mike is retell Steve Hall and others, and he shares actionable tips in his solo episodes. Like the recent one, he did number 262 on the laws of maintenance, which are relevant to today's discussion, so make sure to follow the mind muscle connection. And Jeff, it's an honor to welcome you to the show.

 

Jeff Hoehn  02:27

So thank you, that was a great introduction. Like I told you off air Man, I'm really impressed by your the amount of work that you put in ahead of time. I'm, I'm a little ashamed of myself now after this, but no, I appreciate you having me on. And I'm glad that you wanted to talk about these specific topics, because I think they are super important. And probably something that's maybe a little bit on paper boring, but I think it's awesome integrate chat to have. So I'm looking forward to chatting.

 

Philip Pape  02:51

Yeah, cool. No, I mean, I can nerd out on this stuff forever. And people know me know I do. And I don't find any of this boring. And we're gonna make it exciting and interesting. And people understand why they need to know it. So now I appreciate and appreciate the compliment. And I do love your podcast, it's great. You've covered a lot of topics have a lot of guests. The solo episodes, some of your mysterious. teasers are like, here's a topic I find interesting. And then, you know, it's like, what is he talking about today? Because that's good. So let's, let's get to know you a bit. Let the audience get to know you, if they're not already familiar with your work. I guess I want to understand your motivation and envision for taking, you know, taking your your past history with personal fitness, what you've learned your experiences, and then sharing it with the world specifically through coaching and podcasting. Yeah.

 

Jeff Hoehn  03:37

So, you know, for me, I think I got into fitness to just, you know, look better, like, I wanted to have bigger muscles and everything like that. And, you know, that was, I think that's how most people get into it. Right? I'm sure I'm sure it's probably the same for you. But you know, along the journey, you find out that there's a lot more to it than just that. And so for me, that was that was something that again, I got into it for that, but but figuring out that, hey, you know, there's a lot more than just having bigger muscles or looking better, right. Like, that's important. But I feel like it taught me a lot of life lessons. And it just had a lot of carryover to other aspects of my life. And so for me, you know, I want to, I want to help people get to that point, right. Like, obviously, I want to help them look better, but I think that's that's part of it. But I also want to teach, you know, other people that you know, how it can carry over to other aspects of your life, and it's just basically fitness and nutrition is just something that I feel like, makes everything else you do better. Like if that's, you know, if you're taking care of that, like everything else you do is better. Right? And there's a lot of carryover to whether you own your own business, you know, you you know, you're an employee somewhere, relationships and you know, managing money. I feel like there's a lot of carryover. And so for me, I just feel like that's the one thing that if you can get that nailed down, I just feel like other aspects of your life get better. And so for me, that's, you know, why I want to do it. And I also feel like to, you know, along the way, I'm sure you feel this way as well. There was just a lot of things that I probably did at one time that weren't great and I could have spent a lot of time to time and hard work, and just you know what, and now obviously with like social media and you know, just the access of information, the ease of information that we can get, you know, we have all this access to all this information, you know, there's a lot of stuff that I feel like isn't great. And so I just want to, you know, help people get to that point to where they can they fitness and nutrition can be a part of their lifestyle, obviously, you know, push, like getting results, but also making sure that it's not this like all or nothing mindset, and like these, these crazy protocols that just, you know, they aren't going to work for most people, I think the big one, and I'm going to kind of go off on a tangent here, I think the big thing too, is, with social media, I feel like, it's so easy to get in this like comparison game too, with with social media. And so like, you know, the other thing I really want to like help people with is realizing that what you see on social media isn't necessarily like, you shouldn't compare yourself to that, you know, I'm sure. You know, as a coach yourself, like, you have these conversations all the time, where it's like, Hey, I know you want to, you know, look like this, but realize that that person is completely different than you are. And like, you know, it's the people that get shown in your feeds are probably the outliers to most things. And so like, you know, helping people with that, I think is super important, too. So, you know, that that's, like I said, kind of, we're off on a side tangent there. But those are the things that kind of came to my mind.

 

Philip Pape  06:18

What, yeah, totally. And I can relate to a lot of that I'm sure I'm sure the listener candidates, probably why they listen to your show, my show and others like it, podcasting gives us that medium to be able to dive into that next level, I mean, the amount of research you put into some of your shows, right, you can tell it shows that you're, you know, you care about bringing it down to the level where people understand why they understand what to do. And it's not just like, you know, 123, by my program, it's not, you know, this click Beatty thing, even though we have to use the social media regardless, the other thing you said is how it expands to other areas of your life. And it made me think about how, you know, when you ask the client, why do you what's your goal? And they say, I want to lose weight? Or what's your goal, I want to look good? Like, okay, why do you want that, right? And then they go to that next level. All right, I want to I want to feel better, okay, why, and you dig in and dig in. And that's kind of that, that deeper meaning for why we do this, and why you want to help. But you also mentioned how it impacts other areas of your life. And I think that applies to mastery of anything, right? Like, if you master become a Master of Marketing, become a master of public speaking, it tends to transcend that into other things. And that's, I mean, that's being a human right. It's being like a capable, awesome human in this world. So it would you say, like, your overall coaching, philosophy and values? How would you pin them down? Based on all of this discussion?

 

Jeff Hoehn  07:34

Yeah, so I guess my coaching values would be, you know, obviously, you know, client comes to you, they want to look better, right? Like, again, what that's, that's going to be what we're going to push for, right like that, that is super important. So making sure that, you know, we get the clients results like that, it's going to be at the forefront. But it also I think, you know, some other values I have there is, you know, obviously education is going to be super important. Like, I think that's important, because I always tell clients, this, if, you know, let's say, for example, they do want to look better, that's, you know, again, we're going to aim for that, but if we're learning better habits along the way, and we're learning like more about your body, or things like that, like those are going to be things that you can take with you moving forward. Whereas like, you know, like we could get, we could get anybody to lose 15 pounds, if we you know, if we make the protocol drastic enough, but it's like, is that going to be something that you're going to, you know, you're gonna learn anything there, you're gonna be able to take that with you moving forward. So, you know, I always tell clients, like, that's, that's one of the main things is just the education piece and learning about yourself, but also, you know, better strategies as well. So I think that's, I think that's important. What else is, what else would be super important in terms of, you know, obviously, everything I do, like, I think there is a sense of, like, we want to push the client, but at the same time, and we want to get them uncomfortable, but also making sure that what we're doing is something that, you know, they're not feeling like crap in the process, I think that's super important. You know, and, and making sure that, you know, they're feeling good in the process. And again, it's not something they hate, because, again, that's not going to be anything that they can, you know, do for for a long period of time. So I think that's important. You know, obviously, communication, communicating with the clients is super important, you know, why we're doing what we're doing, again, that goes back to the education piece, but communicating along the way, and you kind of hit on it too, like with the coaching process, it's not just a, Hey, this is what we're doing, go and do it, it's, you know, there, it's a collaboration too, right? Like, for sure to make sure that, you know, you have a piece of like, what's going on too, because again, that's going to be that's going to be something that's going to fit best for you but also, you know, if you are helping make those decisions, I feel like you're going to be more likely to to to actually do them rather than me being like, hey, go do that go do this. Right. Some clients want that. But again, I'm still I still think it's important to even if that's what they want, I still think it's important to push them a little bit towards that and I always I think I made a post on this the other day about like, again, we want to get a client uncomfortable and I think that looks different from each I am right. So for like one client, it could be, hey, we are going to is going to be more of a collaborative process where you're going to have more of an input here, and I'm not just gonna be like, Hey, go and do this. Now, again, there might be some of that, but we're still going to try to push you to be uncomfortable there. And, and for one client, it could be, you know, they do just need to, like, do something different. And they might need to listen a little, you know, they might need to do something a little bit more, and then also to like, and we'll probably talk about this, but like, for one client, it could be, hey, you need to stay consistent with your workouts, that's what you need. But for another client, it could be, hey, we need to back off a little bit. Right? So it looks different for everybody. But I would say those are kind of the big things there. Hopefully that answered your question. Yeah, for sure,

 

Philip Pape  10:35

man. So education, the education, the awareness, and you kind of touched on, I don't know, if he's you posted, or somebody else said, you know, you don't always have to be a nice guy, but always be kind. I don't know if that I don't know who said that. But kind of the idea of we push our clients and you mentioned being uncomfortable, that's kind of every day when you're trying to change is it's something different, right. And it may be a good, uncomfortable, or maybe a very uncomfortable version of that. So the so these are awesome, right? That's what I think people want to do. But people do have to understand, they can't just do the same thing over and over and see results. So I know we want to jump into the topic. And this is kind of relevant, because when we talk about weight maintenance, we're talking about sustaining your body weight, and there's a lot of different plate. There's a lot of places you come from to get to that state, right? We don't just say, Okay, I want to maintain weight, there's a reason for that. But it's almost a state of non change, right. And so some people have trouble wrapping their head around this idea, or that it's boring. And I get it from personal experience, man, because I'm just finishing a fat loss phase. And when I'm done, I don't want to maintain weight for too long. I want to go right into the building. So high level, what are your overall thoughts on weight maintenance and these concepts? Yeah, well,

 

Jeff Hoehn  11:45

so I think first, you know, the thing that's important to look at is people do hear maintenance, and they automatically think that it's like, okay, hey, no progress whatsoever. Right. And that's obviously not the case. You know, we'll continue to dive into this. But like, I think that's the first thing that people need to know is like, maintenance isn't necessarily you're just not making progress at all right? It's more so like, your body weight is at maintenance. And but there's a lot of things that can that can go on. So I think that's the first thing that needs to that, you know, I need to hit on first, before we dive into this is it's still progress. Right? Next, you know, I think any, again, people here maintenance, and they think they automatically just think it's not like making progress. But to me any nutrition strategy, or exercise strategy, or any protocols that we're going to do that gets you to maintain weight long term is a win, right? Because, you know, what do most people have problems with, it's seeing weight gain, you know, over time. And so I think a lot of times when people hear like certain protocols or something that doesn't, that's not weight loss, they automatically think it's not good, right. But it's like weight maintenance. Like, that's a big thing, especially in today's world. So, so you know, I think that's important. Those are kind of the two big things that, you know, I always tell people about when they when they hear maintenance. So as far as like, so those are kind of couple things there with that. I don't know if you want me to dive into like, maybe, yeah, go ahead. And

 

Philip Pape  13:02

yeah, no, no, I don't I have a million questions. I always do, we always go off on tangents. And I don't get half to half of them. It's okay. We're having a conversation. So, you know, the idea that it's still progress, you said a lot of other things going on. It's a long term success strategy in that at some point, you're going to lose weight, potentially, I want to keep it off, or gain weight or want to keep it whatever, something like 95% of people gain all the way back. Right. And Brandon was telling me the other day, some other sobering statistics about that. But there's challenges and difficulties here, because of the fact that you're trying to stay steady. It's almost it's almost more difficult in some ways than going up or down. Right. So what are those challenges people face?

 

Jeff Hoehn  13:38

Yeah, well, like you said, again, it's it's the fact that oh, hey, maintenance is not progress, right? You know, what I commonly see, I think this will will be helpful is like, what you commonly see in the fitness industry is, you know, people, they, they get into, they want to do fat loss. So then they, you know, they want to lose weight, so they restrict calories, do a bunch of cardio, and they see this weight turned down super quick. And it ends up being these, you know, we talked about sustainability earlier. And I think that's super important. And when people do it that way, you know, they lose, they lose weight quickly, but then they're miserable in the process, probably lost some lean body mass in the process as well, so muscle, they lose that and then you know, what happens? You know, you just you start eating like you did before and the weight comes back on quickly. The problem with that is, you know, now you have less less muscle weights gonna come back on quicker so then you gain weight. So then like over time, what you see happen here is you see these people, they you know, they trend down, and then weight comes back up, it might stay the same, it might go a little bit higher, but the problem there is you're going to have more more fat mass in that process. Because anytime you lose weight and you lose muscle in the process, your body is going to gain most of that weight and if you do it quickly, your body is going to get most of that weight back via fat right. So so this is what ends up happening and then and then people then what happens then, you know a couple weeks months go by I hate Let's do that again, right, and it just ends up being this yo yo with with over time, you know, a little bit more fat mass and we're less muscle. So I like to, I like to have what I call a maintenance phase, you'd call reverse diet phase, whatever it may be where after that, after that fat loss diet, we're going to bring you back to, we're gonna find a way to eat that's going to, you know, maintain your weight, maybe it comes up a little bit, but we're just going to avoid that, like super increase that increase in food and the big spike after after, after you lose weight, lose body fat, whatever it may be, the biggest challenges that I see people have with this is. So anytime you lose, lose body fat, and or you're in a calorie deficit, like for a long period of time, you're gonna see some, you're gonna see hunger come up a little bit, you know, you might have a little less energy. And so when that happens, your body wants to get back to where it was before. And so, in that, that's why you see an increase in hunger, like energy levels are lower, things like that. And so if you just go straight back to eating like you did before, again, you're gonna see things come back up. So I think the the first main challenge is like hunger super high after that period of time, right? And if, and if you just listen to your body, and you don't do anything, that's that's why you you see that that comes, like, why it's so hard to maintain your weight after afterwards, right? Because again, your body wants to get back to where it was before. So I think that's, that's the first challenge is like, hunger super high. And so it can be really hard to moderate your food intake. But then on top of it, a lot of times people restrict themselves for a long period of time. And then you know, what happened? Do you want to start to eat tasty food again, so people go straight back into eating tasty food, and you're already hungry. And these types of foods are already really tough to moderate, because they're just designed to get you to overeat and continue to eating and keep wanting more. But then you combine it with the fact that, hey, you're already hungrier. So you just want more and more, right, so it becomes really challenging to me, you know, to moderate your food intake. It's almost it's basically like a cheat code to eat more calories, right? These these types of foods that are easily available tasty foods.

 

Philip Pape  17:05

And hold on, what are we talking? And were you talking about the scenario for anybody who's lost weight? Whether you are training eating protein, and all the things or not? Are we talking to a specific scenario here?

 

Jeff Hoehn  17:14

Yeah, I mean, both people even, you know, people that are on the way down, that don't lift weights or their proteins low, you know, they are going to, they're going to be at up probably a little, they're going to see this happen. Like, they're going to be the higher risk of all this stuff, right. But even if you do lose body weight, lose body fat, and your your, you know, lifting weights, eating enough protein, you're still going to this is still going to happen to you, right? It's just probably not going to be as bad in that in that scenario. But yeah, both people they're going to see this this happen. So but yeah, those are, those are some challenges. Another challenge too. And, you know, some mistakes that people will make, in this period of time afterwards is, you know, again, it's like, people go all in during the fat loss phase. And then, you know, then Monday comes around, it's like, oh, maintenance, I'm not fat loss diet, and I'm just gonna go back to doing whatever I was doing before, right, and whether that's like not tracking anything. So again, tracking can be like your body weight, it can be like your biofeedback, you know, maybe you're not moving as much like, it's like, Oh, hey, I don't have to lose body fat anymore. So now I'm just not going to move as much. And all these things add up, right? And then you combine it with what I talked about with your hunger increasing. And then to like, people will stop like weighing in because like, Oh, hey, you know, I have that goal of like, seeing weight come down to now I'm not gonna weigh in anymore. And I'm not sure you know, what, like, some people have, you know, some people like to have people weigh in regularly. Some people don't, it's just I think depends on the client and what their relationship is with the scale. But that goes back to the education piece, I really tried to teach clients how to understand what's going on with scale weight, because I think that's super important. So I think if you have a good you know, if you have a coach with you that can help you with this, like, it's good to continue to track your body.

 

Philip Pape  18:47

While we're on the same page there. I don't know, if you listen to my stuff. I'm always talking about tracking and even even even the value of daily weight tracking, as an antidote for that emotional tie in with the scale, it actually seems to help, because now you've got the data. So totally agree there. Yeah.

 

Jeff Hoehn  19:02

Well, and you know, people, they stopped tracking that, right. So then it's like, it can be a way to just kind of help you moderate your food. Like, again, if you see your weight go up a little bit like well, okay, I probably need to back off a little bit. Right. But if you're not focused on that, it's like you don't have anything to kind of get you to pump the brakes a little bit. Right. So it was an incentive. Yeah. Yeah. I think the big thing is to go back to all this into title. And I think that the missing piece for a lot of people here is this kind of planned approach to fat loss, right? Like, yes, the fat loss diet is important. But what do you do after that is super important as well, too, because if you're missing out on that part, afterwards, I feel like you're going to end up having to do the same thing over and over and over again. So you know, I think having something set up after that, that period of time is super important. Like for example, I just had a client, he had to go through a pretty hard weight cut for an MMA fight. So what like what we had to do for him would be a little bit different than a lifestyle client, but you know, he put him he put his body through the wringer to get down to get this weight down. And you know, afterwards, you know, one of his main things he wants to work on with me was he had to do this multiple times. And after each fight, he wouldn't you know, he would just go back to his normal life, you would be super hungry. And so he would just kind of go on these beatings breeze, yeah, Ben just basically where he would just eat anything, everything drink, and, you know, then he would get up to a weight that, you know, when he was trying to fight again, he'd have to lose much weight. And it's just this, it's this process that would go over and over again. And so like for him, you know, some of his challenges have been, you know, he's, he's super hungry. And so we're talking about, hey, like, you know, we just have to increase the amount of food that you're that you were eating, you know, like, for example, don't just go straight from like, eating all these quote unquote, diet foods to then all sudden, going back to, you know, pizza all the time. And like tasty foods, like we got to still eat for the most part, the same foods just in large quantities, right? Yeah.

 

Philip Pape  20:46

Yeah. So what I'm hearing from some of this, right, and people need to understand is that the the fat loss phase itself as you're going through it, and as you're getting toward maintenance, that's when we start doing the prep work for maintenance, right? Like, there's ways to do that. And I also pull from this that at least for a lifestyle client, like a Gen pop, you know, I don't want to claim to just cut everything out that they enjoy during a fat loss phase, we want to try to build them in, we're not talking about, you know, the 24 hour cuts and the MMA fighters necessarily here who have to, or bodybuilders who have to get more dialed in. But it's like, if you're at least allowing for some of that, and then accommodating it, you have those skills, right, as you come out of it. So So what are the things someone would do, let's say 12, or 16 week fat loss phase, you're maybe halfway through and thinking ahead toward maintenance? What's what's the best way to prepare for that?

 

Jeff Hoehn  21:31

Yeah, well, I think part of it is just realize that yes, the fat loss portion of it's over, but you're still going to need to put in the work afterwards, right? I think I think mentally preparing yourself for that can be helpful. But you know, just realize that you are going to get a little bit more flexibility with food, right, you get a little bit more quantity. So that will be helpful there. Some other things too, you know, make sure that you have a game plan for you know, weight training, movement, right, I think that's another big thing. To make sure you have some goals set up there with that, again, we want to make sure we wait train, because the big thing too is, you know, we talked about weight training a little bit ago, but I've made this post before, I think if you do see a little bit of weight gain, you know, what you do in that process is important too, right? Like, if you're not weight training, and you're gaining weights, like, okay, that's going to be different than gaining weight and weight training, right. So, you know, making sure you have that setup. Movement, again, make sure you're still you know, what, no matter like, however you track your cardio or steps, or whatever it is, you know, make sure you start a game plan there with that. But from a nutrition standpoint, you know, what I tell clients is, like I said, just, we're still going to eat relatively the same amount of the same foods, just we're going to increase the quantities, but you know, I guess you could, if you have a, like, I always tell clients, I like to have them like have like a set amount of meals per day, because I think that really allows for some structure. So I think making sure you still have that in place, you know, making sure you're still you know, doing your prep work, whether that's going to the grocery store, prepping, you know, making sure you're still doing those things, I think can be really helpful there. You know, to help you prepare for for that time.

 

Philip Pape  23:04

Cool. Yeah. What about um, you know, you talked about getting back to a certain way, we talked about either reverse dieting or recovery diet and whatever term you want to use? Should should people be concerned about setpoint? Theory? Is that a thing? I know, the evidence is mixed about it, the idea that we all have a weight range where we stabilize. And so when we think of maintenance, is there or is there an artificial weight that we're trying to maintain it that's counterproductive versus this setpoint? Weight?

 

Jeff Hoehn  23:28

Yeah, I definitely think there is some truth to that. So I think they so what they call now and like what the model that they think is like the most effective is called like the dual point intervention model, right. So it's like, we have these, like, we have this like high end, where like, you know, once you get to a certain body fat level, on the high end, it's like, things start to kick in, where it's like, hey, we'll we'll chill out, like, you know, your body's going to try to expend more energy, like basically the opposite of when you're trying to lose weight. But then when you get to a body fat level, on the other end, it's like, then this is where you really see hunger start to kick up, like, you know, you may see your libido go down the drain, you know, sleep might start to suffer energy levels, right. And anything in between, there's where your body's like comfortable, right? So like, in that range. For people. I don't know if people can see me, obviously, on a podcast, but like that range could differ from person to person, right? Like for one person that that top end could be super high. So it's like their bodies just kind of want to keep gaining weight. For some people, that bottom point could be really low. So they can just keep losing losing weight. But for some people, it's like, it's really small, right? Their body just really wants to stay where it's at. So I definitely think there's some, like we do need to take that in consideration. But at the end of the day, you know, what your habits are, I feel like are going to really determine where you fall at on that on that scale, in that range. Right. And one other thing too, that I feel like it's important here with this is in Why think maintenance is important. And again, when we say maintenance, like I think maintenance it maintenance can be like a phase where you're just not trying to push body weight up or down. It can be a phase where maybe you're just trying to take some stress off the body. But it can also just be like your calories. You're about to write, I think something like I think that needs to be like, you know, people need to, like, I guess I just need to explain that at a time. Like a, it just really depends on like, what are you trying to do with it? So there's different ways. But

 

Philip Pape  25:10

what I'm saying, Are you saying the term maintenance as in referring to your expenditure, your your true maintenance versus maintaining your weight? Is that is that distinction making?

 

Jeff Hoehn  25:19

Yeah, basically, like, I think there's a difference in terms of like, okay, it's a maintenance phase, like a maintenance phase can be a phase where we're just trying to take some stress off, right, we're not trying to push body weight up, we're not trying to push performance, we're not trying to push body weight down, we're just, you know, just trying to find a good range to stay at basically homeostasis for your body right now kind of get to that in a minute why that's important. But also, there's maintenance calories, right? And I think, again, there's a difference there, because maintenance calories is just your energy balance, right? And, yes, you're not going to lose body fat, if your calories are maintenance, but you could still, depending on where you're at, in your training or training journey, you could still build some muscle at maintenance. Right? So So I think there's a difference there in terms like, just because you're at maintenance calories, doesn't mean you're at like maintenance, like a maintenance phase, if that makes sense.

 

Philip Pape  26:01

Yeah, totally. Totally. Go ahead. Yeah, no, no, you're not you have a thought? Well,

 

Jeff Hoehn  26:07

what I was gonna say is, the reason why we want to do this is because it kind of tie in the dual intervention model that I was just talking about, like where your body is comfortable, is, you know, putting your body weight up or down is a stressor on the body, right? Like, if you put your body weight up for too long, your body is going to start to have some adaptations to that, right. And this is where you see a lot of like, the general population is that where like, they're just in this chronic energy surplus, right, where their weight is going up and up. And this is where you start to see, you know, that patients to that end up being like, type two diabetes, like insulin resistance, things like that, right. And so that's the adaptation there for that. Whereas the adaptation on the way down is, would be called more like metabolic adaptation, right? Where it's like, when you continue to push your body weight down, your body is going to have these adaptations in place to just be like, Hey, we got to chill out here, we can't just keep losing more and more weight. The best way I can explain this is, think back to how we evolved for like, most of our time on Earth, right, we didn't have this abundance of food. That was, you know, you had to expend a ton of energy to go and get food, right? You know, for pretty much all our existence where it's like in the last like 3050 years, now, you can literally, you don't have to expend any energy other than pressing numbers on your phone, and you can get 5000 calories, right? So there's this kind of like mismatch now, where our bodies are just the, it's just a lot different now. And again, so like, back in the day, when we didn't have all this abundance of energy around our bodies are really good at being like, Okay, if we don't have a lot of food around, we need to expend energy to go and get food, we your body's really good at being like, hey, let's you know, down regulate things. So it's really good at adapting up or down. And so, again, those those are stressors on the body, and there's adaptations that happen, I mean, again, even if you're low, let's say you're on the way down, you know, like, for example, things like thyroid could slow down, like, that's something that there, that's an adaptation for men, you know, depending on where you're at body fat level wise, testosterone could go down, either on the way down, or on the way up. So these are all adaptations that are in place. And so that's all stressors on the body, right, like, either way up or down. And so why we go to maintenance is to take that stress off of the body, right and like, just let it be comfortable, because that's going to be you know, where your body feels the best and where it's going to be able to, you know, just perform, you know, make sure you get, you know, perform your best again, where it's at its most comfortable.

 

Philip Pape  28:29

Ya know, these are, these are really important, and people have to understand there's a cascade of things that happens, right, you mentioned thyroid, there's extra die off for women, there's, you know, leptin and ghrelin, which cause hunger, and then if you exacerbate that with lack of sleep, and sometimes people move less when they're in a fat loss phase, you sometimes really need that break. Sometimes it's just for psychological reasons, but there are because you're gonna get back into the adaptation as soon as you start dieting again. But if you don't have that break, you you might break like mentally break and be like, I'm done and then start, you know, sabotaging your progress.

 

Jeff Hoehn  29:01

Well, that's that's where you see most people fall anyways, right? Whether they do it or not, like whether they take a maintenance phase or not, they end up doing that. Anyways. Right? So yeah, like you said, it's really that like that, that maintenance phase is going to be there to help take stress off of the body because again, it's you know, people don't realize but you know, you're at where you're at, because of like, the, what you've done to it. And again, your body's really good at adapting to things and so really, if you're having any of these symptoms or anything like that, it's just from what you've been doing. Right. So

 

Philip Pape  29:32

and when you do this, so you know, there's a little bit of, quote unquote controversy about reverse dieting ever since the treks article came out the idea that if you know what your current means is you just jumped to that and recover there's no need to stretch it out. But we still use the term reverse dieting kind of to mean the same thing for for some people. Is that what you do you just kind of increase carbs bring them back to their current maintenance when this happens? If this was

 

Jeff Hoehn  29:53

like a bodybuilder or somebody like that, we would have like more of like a recovery diet, right? Where it's like, yes, that person if they're like, super low body fat again, you're gonna see those adaptations happen like hormones are going to decrease like for them, you would want to get them back to maintenance like as soon as possible. For more lifestyle client who, you know, maybe they're not you know, for women maybe they're not so 20% body fat for men maybe they're not like sub eight 10%. You know, maybe they're a little bit higher than that, but they're leaner than what they've been they've been dieting for a while. For that person, I'll do more of like a reverse back to maintenance right in the reason being is they're not as in bad of a shape as like somebody that's like, super, super lean, right. So they have a little bit of wiggle room there to where we can slowly bring their calories back up and in find where there like maintenance is that now and that can be a good way to just not like because I feel like if you go from dieting straight to your maintenance, you know, you could see some weight gain come a little bit quicker. And for some people, they don't want to see that. So I like to use reverse dieting to for more lifestyle clients and slowly get them back to their maintenance and just make sure that we don't overshoot anything on the

 

Philip Pape  30:56

way. Yeah, and it's practical to write there's a sustainability aspect of just not jumping so many calories. Just from a practical standpoint. Yeah,

 

Jeff Hoehn  31:04

no, absolutely. And I think too, if you're somebody that is in this situation, and you're you're super worried about gaining regaining weight, and reverse dieting, like realize you're already like most of the way there, like you already have a good plan in place. And so it's like your, the chances of you going overboard are are very low. Whereas, you know, you take somebody on the other end of the spectrum, they just are like, Oh, I cannot wait to just go back to what I was doing before. It's like, okay, you know, this is it's a little bit different there, right. So like, the fact that you know, you need a game plan, and you're going to do that I think is important. I think the downside with like a reverse diet is, and this is kind of what Eric Trexler talked about in his articles, like, it's a way to like kind of prolong the calorie deficit in a way. And so you just have to be careful with that, that you're not like sitting at these body weights or deficits that are you're not sitting in these body, the body fat levels that are going to cause some of those issues that we talked about from like hormonal, you know, biofeedback standpoint. And also making sure that you're not in a deficit for a long period of time, because again, like we talked about, your body's gonna adapt to that, even if it is a small deficit, it is going to continue to adapt to that. So you just have to make sure that you're not doing it to like, maintain some physique that isn't like doable for you. Right, you know, Hi, my

 

32:12

name is Lisa. And I'd like to Big shout out to my nutrition coach, Philip pape, with his coaching, I have lost 17 pounds, he helped me identify the reason that I wanted to lose weight, and it's very simple longevity, I want to be healthy, active and independent. Until the day I die. He introduced me to this wonderful little app called macro factor, I got that part of my nutrition figured out along with that is the movement part of nutrition, there's a plan to it and really helped me with that. The other thing he helped me with was knowing that I need to get a lot of steps in. So the more steps you have, the higher your expenditure is, and the easier it is to lose weight when it's presented to you like he presents it, it makes even more sense. And the other thing that he had was a hunker guide, and that really helped me so thank you. The

 

Philip Pape  32:55

last question about maintenance is what should people be tracking? Right? Do we know calories? Macros? Wait couple things there? What are some other key metrics people should track?

 

Jeff Hoehn  33:04

Yeah, no, that's a good question. Um, so what I like to have clients track is this one, I think is the most important I, I kind of told you earlier that like how client feels in the process, I think is super important. So what I like to have clients track is I call it like, biofeedback. You know, people call many different things with biofeedback is going to be things like, you know, how's your sleep? How your energy levels, how are your hunger levels, you could, you could throw libido in there, you could throw digestion in there. And so like tracking those things, I think are super important. Because, again, if if those are in a good spot like that, to me, that's the most important you know, whereas like if a client is saying that they're like, super hungry, or like libido is gone, like they don't have any libido, maybe for female client, their menstrual cycle, like, If those things aren't there, some something's mid, like, we got to dive deeper, we got to figure out something that's going on there. Right. So like, I think that's the most important thing, because in these maintenance phases, reverse diet phases, we want to see biofeedback improve, right? That's, that's the main goal, right? So you want to make sure that that's, that's in a good spot there. So biofeedback, for sure, you know, making sure you're in a good spot. Because like, if a client, for example, is if we're in a reverse diet phase, and we're not seeing these things improve, and they're like, Oh, I'm really scared of weight gain. But you continue to, like, have that kind of small deficit, because you like, like, you know, you're worried about bringing them up a little bit higher. It's like, you have to have that honest conversation with them about being like, hey, we probably just need bring your calories a little bit

 

Philip Pape  34:28

is showing. Yeah, that's why you feel that way.

 

Jeff Hoehn  34:31

Yep. So So biofeedback, I think is super important. You know, continue to track your training, I think that can be a big thing to like, making sure you're tracking that because like, you know, if you come out of a deficit into maintenance, you're probably going to see a little bit of an uptick in your training. So, um, you know, I think that's important to track that. Make sure that's trending up and whatnot. I think activity levels. I like to have clients track it through steps, just because that's a good indicator of like, overall activity levels. So tracking that you Have some sort of food monitoring again, it doesn't necessarily have to be calories and macros, if you did that for your fat loss phase, I would still push you to do that in your maintenance phase afterwards, just for a period of time, you don't have to do it forever, I think people get this mindset towards tracking that's like, if they do it once, they either have to do it forever, or they never have to do it again, I think there's just like, they're just like, I like that phases with nutrition, I think there needs to be faced with a tool, it's a learning tool, an education tool. Yeah. And so having some periods of time where you do it, you don't do it, I think it's great, but doing it for that period of time afterwards. And if you can, you know, really, really try to minimize the amount of like, tasty food you have in that post diet period, because it's just gonna be really hard to moderate and you're just gonna want more so, you know, again, tracking some sort of food intake, and then making sure that you limit tasty foods as best as you can. I know, again, that's way easier said than done. But I think the big thing is don't like have, you know, if this was your entire calories that you had, and like you had this much be your, like nutrient dense type foods don't just like all sudden, like, flip it, where it's like, now you're eating only like 20%, nutrient dense foods and 80%, you know, still try to stick to like 80 90% rule there with that. And then lastly, you know, body weight, I think it's super important to continue to track your body weight in this period of time afterwards, just so again, things aren't getting out of hand. Now, again, having a good coach like yourself to kind of coach people and educate them on like, what's going on, like, hey, you know, if you're in a fat loss phase, you're super depleted, you know, you're don't have a lot of food in your system, and all sudden, you know, we bring up the calories 234 100, you're gonna see your body weight come up a little bit, right, like, there's just one fluid from the carbs. Yep, yeah, glycogen stores. Yeah, and just more food in your belly at one time. So I think also, I guess this goes back to our original topic here of like, maintenance, it's like, maintenance also isn't just like this one, number one number, right? It's a range, right? So maintenance calories are gonna be arranged your maintenance, weight is going to be a range. And so again, just realizing that I think can be super helpful.

 

Philip Pape  36:59

For sure, yeah, I use plus or minus three for most people, three pounds, because it's kind of that good range where, because if you if you did it too tight, and I was like, What's going on, I'm gaining weight help, you know, it's some flexibility. Well, and

 

Jeff Hoehn  37:11

to one other thing on this, it just came to my head about the weight thing that there's been times where I've had a client in a fat loss phase, and we go back to you know, it's a reverse diet, we're going to slowly bring their calories back up, I've seen it many times where some clients, they still continue to see their weight trend down a little bit, right. And some of that has to do with we talked about stress, and it's like your body's, you know, in a fat loss phase, again, like that's a stressor on the body. And it's you're probably you know, you could potentially be holding on to some some water weight because of the stress, right. So sometimes you bring these clients calories up a little bit, and they start to see their weight trend down a little bit. That's also has to do with like, knee like if that, you know, if you bring your calories back up your body's like more, it's going to expend more energy, because you're bringing in more food, things like that. But I've also seen clients where their weight stay the same. And then there's also clients that have seen their weight come up a little bit, right. So you don't know until you actually do it. But just realize that you could increase calories, your weight come down a little bit, it could stay the same, or it could come up a little bit in that process.

 

Philip Pape  38:08

Yeah, and there's one other piece about maintenance. I'm kind of surprised I didn't bring it up. But the idea that especially when you're getting started, right, being in a maintenance phase, potentially, when you start lifting, when you start putting together all these habits, at least that's something I like to do with clients, I know it's a pretty common approach with good coaches, where you start to see all these magical things happen without the scale changing. And you have to have those conversations of, you know, moving away from focusing on the scale, wait for an hour, at least until they're then mentally ready and physically ready for that fat loss phase.

 

Jeff Hoehn  38:36

Yep, no. percent. And I feel like too, I've seen clients where, if they've been that person that's always tried to restrict their calories or be super lean. And that's like all they've ever done. It's like you put them at maintenance. And it's like, you know, they're there. When you sit right? Yeah, everything, like, everything gets better, they feel better. Training gets better. So that's gonna help with muscle growth. You know, so yeah, a lot of, you know, depending on where the person is, at, like, there's a lot of good things that happen if you if you've spent a lot of time just always trying to restrict restrict, and you get to maintenance, like a lot of good things can happen on at that point, you know, I think the big one too is like, for women is the menstrual cycle, right? Like they don't realize that like that's a big thing, if that's off and you know, that's not regular, there's something going on that you know, needs to be worked on. And that's typically comes from like stress, right, like some sort of structure and, and the thing was stressed is a lot of people don't realize that stress is like, it's not just your mental stress of like, oh, work was tough. I got in a fight with my, my spouse, you know, stress is also like, you know, too high levels of body fat as stress, you know, too low body fat levels of stress on the body. You know, eating patterns, like if you eat late at night before bed like that could you know kind of cause some stress in terms of, you know, your circadian rhythm like poor sleep is stress, right? So there's like all these other factors of stress there that play a role. So

 

Philip Pape  39:52

yeah, and then you see HPA Axis issues, sometimes as a result, and a lot of those get resolved right. When you get out that situation. I mean, I've had clients who, you know, their mode of training is definitely not heavy lifting. It's a lot of cardio, right? Yep. And as soon as you remove that stress, and you say, Hey, we're going to lift really heavy weights for three days a well, it's not going to be more stressful, it actually it actually removes a systemic stress. And then all of a sudden, all the adrenal issues and cortisol issues you might have had go away when you're now eating 20 700% or 2200 calories. And by the way, your weights not changing, is it? It is really, really like magic to some people. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. All right. So let's talk about recovery. That's the other topic which kind of overlaps us in some way. Most people I guess, would think of recovery as as restoring your energy, your your, maybe your glycogen between workouts, maybe not being sore, getting sleep, preventing injury, all those things. How do you define recovery, which I suspect is also one of your biofeedback measures? Possibly, um, how do you how you define it? Yeah, yeah.

 

Jeff Hoehn  40:53

So you know, to I guess the scientific term of recovery is like, basically, you're back at the point to where you can, you know, in your training session, you can like, progress again, essentially, right? Like, you're back to like, baseline performance levels. That's like, the scientific term for me, you know, I do, I do monitor like a client's biofeedback or recovery, and what I tell them, Okay, so like, it's going to be on a scale of one to five, like, one for like, a low, like, for poor. One would be poor recovery ability. And like, what that's going to look like would be like, you're just like, super low energy, you're just like, kind of best way I could say is you're just kind of Dragon Right? Like you're dragging, you're just low energy. You know, maybe you're like super sore, sore, achy. Motivation just is like kind of down the drain, you're just not feeling great, you know, training, your training session sucks, like, you're just not feeling good in your training session. You're super hungry, you just feel depleted, right? Like that, to me is that's poor recovery ability, right? Good. recovery ability is going to obviously be the opposite of that, right? Like you have high energy, you're feeling great throughout the day, you know, hunger depending on what phase you're in. Hunger is not like super high or something like that. Right? Like you feel sustained energy, you're feeling strong, and your training sessions, you're feeling super motivated to train to do your hit your goals. You know, you could also throw like libido in there, too, right? Like, I've hit on that a couple times. You know, if that's kind of in the in the gutter, like that's poor recovery ability, that's, that's a sign of some sort of stress going on, you're under recovering somewhere. So again, on the opposite end, you know, your, your, your libido is good, right? Like, that's those are all, like good signs there of nuts how I would that's how I typically tell clients like what that what that looks like.

 

Philip Pape  42:27

Yeah, and there's Wouldn't you say? So there's a subjective and an objective kind of element to this. And where I'm going with that is personal experience, and clients who have have said, Hey, I felt I felt sluggish going to the gym, I felt weak. You know, I felt like I was just no way I was gonna get this. And all of a sudden they get a PR, right. Like, well, where would you place that in this spectrum?

 

Jeff Hoehn  42:50

Yeah, no, that's that's a good point. Right? I mean, I think at that point, like, if, like, I know, you said, it is very subjective, right. So I think getting this data is important, right? And like in tracking it, but as a coach, and like, even even if you're just doing this for yourself, you don't have a coach, you're just doing this for yourself, you do need to like, check into it a little bit as well, too, right? Like, ask yourself, ask yourself a little bit more about it. Because like you said, you could be something where it's like, you do feel that way. But then you go in, like you said, you hit a PR So yes, there, I do think that that that can happen. So honestly, that would to me fall under the recovery aspect to where like, you go and train and it's like, you actually end up hitting a PR, right? Like, okay, then maybe the recovery is not as bad as it could have been like, to me, that tells me that you're it's not as bad as it was right. So like, that would be a sign of like better recovery than you think if you're going in, in the PR. I think too, sometimes. You know, people have certain metrics, whether that be like HRV, or they have like a wolf or something like that. And no, like, it will like tell them they're not recovering. So then like mentally, like this is a case of placebo effect. Yeah. And so I think you need to be careful with that. For sure. And then even like to you know, we talked about sleep, and it's like, oh, I got a poor night's sleep. So you go into that training session, like all this is going to be terrible. So like, you do have to check yourself on this a little bit. And like, don't put too much stock into one single thing, you know, so that's what I would tell clients on it. Now again, like you said, it's subjective, so there's definitely going to be a potential like error with it. But I think it's more so when you're like, Oh, we're like noticing trends of like, a client's consistently putting like, one two or three and then you know, their training performance is actually showing that as well to that where it's like, hey, we need to we definitely need to take more than one single day of this like it's going to take some time to really figure it out. Yeah, but I think what it does is it just it allows you to like look into things a little bit more and like just kind of double check Hey, could this potentially be off like okay, maybe it is my sleep you know, am I doing something sleep wise that's off? Am I maybe training a little bit too much am I pushing you know what I mean? Things like that. Oh, totally

 

Philip Pape  44:48

agree. Then you can correlate it with other factors like you did stall on your lift or something, you know, you know, I asked this because a lot a lot of a lot of people especially you get older you deal with all sorts of aches and pains you deal with, especially low back fatigue. Very common or low back pain. I personally have had days where I felt low back soreness, but then I know the type of soreness is fine and I can go do my workouts gonna feel better other days like, no, if I push this something's gonna pop. Right. And he just, you kind of get to know your body over time. You found that personally with you?

 

Jeff Hoehn  45:17

Yeah, no, 100% I think you've definitely there's, it's definitely gonna take you some time to figure out like, you know, okay, is this a pain that I'm gonna push through? Or is this a pain that like, hey, I really need to take it take it easy, right? Um, so ya know, I think learning your body. I think in the beginning, if you are feeling that, like if you're, you know, within like a year or so of training, and this is happening, I do think you probably want to dial back your your intensity a little bit, right, like, just just because you don't know yet, like you said, but I do think in that situation, if you do have any sort of like, let's say recovery, you rate it as low. Yeah, maybe some aches and pains. I think we need to be careful with like, not that meaning like, Oh, hey, I'm just going to lay around all day reacting. Yeah. Because, because I think that that's going to make that will probably make things worse. Whereas like in that situation, maybe you just go in and like you have a little bit of low back pain. And in your mind, you're like, oh, no, if I don't go balls to the wall, in this session, I'm gonna lose all my progress. But I think as you get more experience, you realize that it's all about like, finding things that are going to keep you going for long periods of time. So maybe that day, it is just like, dialing it back a little bit. And it's more of just a lighter trading session. Just showing up and getting in is, that's what you need to do that day. And, you know, that could be the thing that you get some blood flow to the area, it starts to feel better. Or maybe for you, it's like, hey, for me today, I'm just gonna go and get some steps in or something like that, right? Because I think with the steps, that's one of those tricky ones that I always have this conversation with clients, where they're like, Oh, I was super tired today. So I just didn't do any steps. And you know, then it's like, Well, I think part of your issue is you just you didn't get that activity, right. I'm sure you've had those days where you

 

Philip Pape  46:53

stiffened up affects the joints, flex recovery. Yeah, it stiffened

 

Jeff Hoehn  46:56

up. And then and then just laying around, I just feel like you just get this sense of like, you're just getting more tired doing it right. And so I think in that situation, maybe it is just going for a walk, right. And so I think what I'm trying to say is like, you still need to do something, but in terms of the intensity that you're going, maybe that's not the day that you go and try to hit that gray bar on deadlift or something like that, you just dial it back and still get something in because I think that's, that's important.

 

Philip Pape  47:21

Yeah, and you touched on intensity. And so what I want to look at the variables here, the training variables, right, you've got volume got intensity, frequency exercise selection, you know, I'm not a personal trainer, per se, but I help I help my clients a lot with that, and give them form checks. And one of the things I like to do is, is kind of invert the volume, math, you know, if, if the sets of five are just going to be too stressful, if you feel like that's just impossible, maybe we turn into you know, three sets of five become five sets of three or something. So you can change the intensity one way or the other. So how do we manipulate these variables, and also, there's confusion around this with recovery, like I've heard, hey, I'm not going to work out five or six days a week, because I'm in a fat loss phase. But there's kind of a premise there that more days means more stress, when that's not always true, right? Because sometimes shorter sessions on more days can reduce systemic stress. So how do we make sense of it? All?

 

Jeff Hoehn  48:10

Yeah, um, so I think I think with that, like, like you said, they're, they're all kind of related to each other. Right? It's like, I guess the best way to describe it would be like, anybody that's ever like, made a that's played a video game where you like, create your employer, it's like, you, you basically, you can't have the everything be at the max, right? Like, if you want to be like the strongest, yeah, yeah, you're gonna, you're well, then you can't be like the the fastest either, right, like, you're gonna end up, you're gonna have to take a hit on those other kind of traits or attribute attributes, whatever you want to call them. Um, and so it's kind of the same thing, right? It's like the, I think, the more often you train. So frequency, you know, if you train six days a week, you know, you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to manage it to where maybe volumes a little bit lower per session, right? Or maybe intensities a little bit lower per session, or not, every time you train, you're going to like have these exercises that are going to be like, super fatiguing, right. So like, taking like a Romania Romanian deadlift, you know, that's going to be pretty fatiguing on the body. So you, maybe you're not gonna be able to do that every training session, right? You're gonna have to maybe do like Lake curl one day or something like that something that, again, people are like, Oh, that's a machine isolated exercise, you know, do we want to do that or not? Like, well, it just depends on on that, right. So, again, intensity, probably will have to go down a little bit, you're not gonna be able to train to failure, every single set for every exercise, whereas, you know, say you have somebody that train three days a week, it's like, Okay, now we can probably push failure a little bit. Like you can go a little bit closer to failure, because you're just not training as much overall, the volume per session could probably be a little bit higher. Now, again, there's still you know, there comes a point where you can't just keep doing more and more volume. So there's going to be, there's going to be a point to where, like, if you can only train three days, there's going to be some limitations there. But again, you can maybe pick exercises that are a little bit more fatiguing, and you can do Do those each session. Um, so there's all these things, you know, play a role, and they're all tools. Really there. Right? So that's kind of the best way that I guess I could describe that. I don't know if that answered all your questions on it. But if you, ya

 

Philip Pape  50:12

know, people are just wondering, like, what, which of these have the biggest impact? Is it? Is it the volume, like in the tonnage really, because, you know, maybe maybe intensively load on the bar isn't what stressful? Except it could be if you're doing a lot of deadlifts. And you can't do that three times a week? So you know, or does it depend? I mean, the answer is always It depends. Right?

 

Jeff Hoehn  50:30

I do think I think overall volume is the is the number one thing though, right? Like, that's going to be the most important thing there in terms of like, what's what's going to be most fatiguing? Because I think no matter what, once you get, like, like I just said, with that, that three day a week, it's like, yeah, you can do more volume for workout. But at some point, there is going to be that, that that point where it's like, Okay, now, it's just too much volume, that it's going to be junk volume, you're not going to get you're going to be doing more for like, way less return on it. So I do think at the end, the day volume is going to be the number one thing, they're what's going to like same thing for like a, you know, if you somebody that runs, they like to do a lot of running, it's like, the biggest thing there is the amount of volume that they that they have to do, right. But all these other things are just tools that we can kind of manipulate that. But intensity is going to be a big one too, I think you know, but with intensity, it's like, the less you train, the more intense you can can go can go so

 

Philip Pape  51:24

so then, what's the difference between, you know, with age, right, because I know, I can't train like I could when I was 22. And I wish I actually did train like I'm trying to train now, when I was 22. But I did. Alright, so age, you know, we get into our 40s and up and also between men and women. Yeah,

 

Jeff Hoehn  51:39

so as far as the age thing goes, you know, it's definitely I think, as you get older, like your, the volume you can do is definitely gonna go down. Right? There's, there's no doubt about that. But I also think that has a lot to do with I think it has genetics are going to play a role in just aging in general. But I still think that that has more to do with lifestyle than then what people want to attribute it to, right. I mean, just think about it, when you're 20, it was like, yes, you could get away with less sleep, but you're still probably sleeping more than you do. Now, you had way more free time to do whatever you want it. And again, that's going to be part of the recovery and stress process. You know, you just have less responsibilities back then. So it was I didn't

 

Philip Pape  52:15

have the kids, you didn't have the pets, you didn't have the big house, on the mortgage, etc, etc. Yeah, so

 

Jeff Hoehn  52:18

So I think that's, that's gonna play a big role in it, right? So but as you age, it's definitely going to be, you're definitely not going to recover as well as you did when you were younger. So you know, this is where like, as you get older, I think it's important to really get your execution and technique and everything dialed in. Because, you know, again, when you're younger, you can get away with like, hey, if your forms off a little bit, it's no big deal, like, you're going to be fine. Whereas as you get older, you have all that wear and tear of everything else that you did for years, I think each little each time your your technique is off a little bit, I think it's going to it's going to play a bigger role, right. So I'm a huge fan of like, when people are trying to build muscle, like, the best thing you can do is really focus on execution and technique, don't think that it's always about like just trying to push yourself to the wall, like as far as you can, doing as much as you can, like, you're gonna have to dial it back. And the best thing you can do is get away with getting more out of each rep. Because I think that that's going to really help with the injury aspect of it. And again, as you know that the best thing you can do is do things that are going to you're going to be able to do for long periods of time, that's where you're really going to see that that big difference there with with everything. So

 

Philip Pape  53:23

yeah, you know, that whole thing about about form, it's spot on. And yet, I can't tell you how many guys I've seen men and women, but I'm in a barbell club, it's a lot of dudes that are like 4050 years old, and everyday at some lesson about how they hurt themselves and how they're not going to do it again. And it's like, we just don't learn, you always have to go through a little I did that myself, I ended up having back surgery and not because of lifting. But it definitely made me more conscious of every time I lift, I'm going to focus on a cue for this lift every rep every time I go forever. Like that's so important. Well, you know, I

 

Jeff Hoehn  53:53

think two for one for guys, it's more of a ego thing, right? Like, like, I think that's the big thing there. It's all about, oh, this person does this, so I gotta match that. But it's like, how you perform that lift is just so important, right? I had this conversation with Steve Hall actually. And like, we talked about how, like, you know, you see these guys in the gym that would do like, they would have like two plates on there. And you're like, Oh, that's amazing, but you never really like paid attention to how they did that, how they actually performed it. Right. And that that is such a big part of it. So you know, I think I think that's important but then you have people on the other side that I think overly focused on technique and then they don't ever progress so a light Yeah. So you need to find that that that happy medium there. But you know, with the weight training, I think the reason that's so important to get good technique is because you got to think you're you're doing you know multiple reps, multiple sets per week and again, you mess up if your performs not perfect once it's no big deal. But you know, you do that over and over again. And these things do start to add up. That's why with like weight training, you don't see a lot of like, acute injuries where it's like it happens right then and there. It's more of like build up of like, you have like more aches and like tendinitis and things like that.

 

Philip Pape  54:58

Yeah. So what about you what about your personal approach to recovery. You know, you've probably dealt with some setbacks and failure, you know, injuries, things like that. What have you dealt with that?

 

Jeff Hoehn  55:07

Can I actually I know you had one more question there about the the female women. Oh, yeah, reference. Do you mind? If

 

Philip Pape  55:13

I go over that? No, go for it, please? Well, I

 

Jeff Hoehn  55:15

was gonna say women on average, tend to recover a little bit quicker than than men do. They just the way that their bodies are, they're just, they can recover a little bit quicker. And that goes for, like, in between sets in between sessions. You know, part of it, too, is probably like, men do have more muscle mass than than women do, generally. So I think that probably plays a big role. And again, just like absolute weightlifting is gonna play a role in that, but but women do tend to recover a little bit quicker. And so really, like, what does that mean? I mean, all that means for women is that they can probably get away with a little bit more training volume, like their programs might have a little bit more volume than like, compared to men. Again, this is generally a

 

Philip Pape  55:51

double edged sword, right? Because you create that volume two, yep.

 

Jeff Hoehn  55:56

And they can maybe rest a little bit short and long, shorter, shorter in between sets. But again, you know, obviously, individual variation, there is the most important and you obviously have to kind of see it for yourself and what that's going to look like so

 

Philip Pape  56:10

yeah, women should be wearing all this stuff is on average, right? Like every individual is going to be respond differently. There is it's funny, you mentioned that about the weight because I remember looking into this not long ago, there are some actual genetic differences that independent of the weight lifted that do help women recover better. I just don't remember the details. estrogens involved.

 

Jeff Hoehn  56:28

estrogens, estrogen, and I think two women typically have like more type one fiber, yes, fibers than men. And so those those are a little bit more fatigue resistant, and they can recover quicker. They're they're a little bit more like endurance tight muscles.

 

Philip Pape  56:43

I knew you'd have the answer. So there you go. Yeah. So so then what about you? Is there any particular story you've got about recovery?

 

Jeff Hoehn  56:52

Yeah, um, so I think for me, this is going to be so you kind of mentioned this, I did have like, for a while, I just would always run into shoulder issues. And again, that just came down to me being young Dom Just just always trained in like, upper body and like benchpress, and like chest. But also for me, it was just, I felt like I was at the like, this was like, probably my, I'm 31 I always forget holding, I'm now 31. And when I was in my like, early to mid 20s, it was all about like, I want it to be jacked. So I just would try to train six, seven days a week, I didn't really pay attention to nutrition sleep, I was like, What the hell's sleep, that doesn't matter. And it was like, if I went two days, without training, I was like, Oh, crap, I'm gonna lose all my game, I'm gonna lose all my games, you know. And so it was all about just going in the gym and just like hammering out like volume, and just like, going for the pump just doing as much as I can Arnold style, right? Yep. And while I while I do think that that will lend itself to some results for a little bit. If you just keep doing that, it's like, eventually, your body's just going to be under recovered. And you're just not going to see any progress, right. Because, you know, if you if you over if you train too much, and you don't have the recovery there and again, this can be this can be calories, this can be how many days off of training you take, like, if you don't have that in place, your body's going to prioritize recovering before it's going to prioritize building muscles, you can be doing all this stuff, and you're just, honestly, you're wasting your time because it can be good for you. But you're just, you're not going to see the results you want you to be putting in a lot of work for not a lot. So for me, you know, a big part of learning more was like, Man, I need to focus more on things outside of the gym, right? You know, so things that can really improve recovery again, or, you know, obviously taking some time away from fat loss dieting that can improve recovery, like being at maintenance like that can help being a surplus that can help a little bit, you know, sleep working on your sleep that can be helpful with the recovery side of things that can increase how much you can do, you know, managing your stress. And then again, this is mental stress, but also the other stressors that I that I was talking about earlier, that can be helpful. And then your training program as well too, right. So we talked about frequency, intensity, like managing all that and making sure that you're not just like, training balls to the wall every single day. And just you know, like, that's going to be super important. And game changer for me. And that's again, going to come down to like your programming and things like that. But also another big thing too, is like making sure that you're not like if muscle building is your main goal, making sure that you're not like trying to weight train, but then also you're like trying to play three sports on the side, you're trying to run a marathon like that, that also goes into the recovery aspect of it as well, too. Oh, I had one more. Shoot, I hope it comes back to me here in a second. There was one more that I wanted to say that I think is big but I think I think getting all the you know, getting your training variables in play are going to be super important. But yeah, those those would be the big things that we're gonna have

 

Philip Pape  59:43

to follow your podcast to get the other the other one because you're teasing it. I wish I can't think of it. That's all good. No, it's all good. But you know how these guys there's only so much you can cram into one. One conversation here. Yeah. So all right, cool. I know we're running short on time. Just couple more questions if you don't mind. And of course, man, yep. I want to pick your brain about the podcast, the mind muscle connection, because, you know, you've had, you've had all these big names on your show, at least they're big, they're idols to me, you know, I love listening to these guys. And we were talking before about the friendships and connections you make. Who's been the most influential because of the personal relationships from podcasts?

 

Jeff Hoehn  1:00:20

Man, that is a good question. I saw that on there and I was like, man, who is it gonna be? So? You know, I would like I told you off air you know, everybody that comes on I feel like I do take away something from and it's like it's really changed my mind on things and I'm really grateful for that. People that I think have had the greatest influence from having them on the podcast. Brian Borstein is a big one. He does my programming now. So Brian Borstein is a good one. I think you just had him on recently, Brandon Cruz has had a big impact. Jeremiah bear is another one that's had a big impact on me. I would say those are probably my my top three. You know, I followed Steve Hall for a long time. And I always love chatting with him. I always get a ton out of hit of chats with him. But I mean, I've also had other like Eric Trexler, Eric Helms, like those that are great guys, too. But in terms of like people I've had on reoccurring, those would probably be the biggest like three for me.

 

Philip Pape  1:01:11

So great games, great games for people to look up. And so I have a funny story about Eric Helms and Eric Trexler. So as I was reaching out to folks like you to be on my show, I reached out to Eric Helms, or at least I thought I did, and it was Eric Drexler and I had said all this stuff. And he's like, Thanks, man. But you got the wrong Eric. So embarrassing. Don't worry, it happens all the time. I said, I'll hit you up later. let some time pass pass the awkward moment I'll get back to you. I hope he still wants to come on because I got his I get his partner Greg, Greg knuckles to come on in a few months, because I use macro factor and a bunch of my clients do and I love to talk and all that stuff. So and then the reverse dieting and all that stuff. Cool, man, Brian. Yeah, Brian Borstein. Brandon Cruz, Jeremiah bear Steve Hall and other so really good.

 

Jeff Hoehn  1:01:56

Yeah. That's that's funny with drinks with Eric. Correct. So I'm sure he was, like you said, I'm sure he that's the first time and it probably won't be the last time that that happens. So

 

Philip Pape  1:02:04

no, no, I have to have to butter him up. When I say again. i What's I mean, have you received, you receive a lot of feedback from listeners, I'm sure for the podcast as well. Like, what's some of the most memorable impact, you know, feedback that you've gotten?

 

Jeff Hoehn  1:02:21

Yeah, I think, you know, I haven't. I guess more so from clients would probably be where I would take this, but I think you kind of also had that clients in there as well, too. And, you know, I think for me to go back to what, again, what we talked about earlier, it's, you know, obviously, helping people get get like, their physique goals, and like, the body composition goals that they want. But anytime I get like a message from a client that's like, Hey, I either got to, like, you know, I got a promotion and this helped like, or it's like, hey, my doctor said, I can get off blood pressure medication, or like, Hey, I'm fitting into these clothes I haven't fit into for years, or like, anything like that, like, to me, that's those are the best like messages to get because, like I said, I think if you can improve somebody's quality of life, like that's just you can't you can't buy that and like, that's, you know, it's it's invaluable. And so that those are my favorite, like, kind of feedback that I've gotten from from people. And even even to like, I can't think of anybody off the top of my head from like, a podcast standpoint, you know, people are like, Hey, listen, I enjoy it. But like, anytime you get a message on like, social media about like, Hey, I've been, you know, they don't like your stuff, but they're like, Hey, I've been following along. And you know, you've really helped me out like, those are always the best ones. And you know, I, anytime you can improve somebody's quality of life, I think it's amazing. So

 

Philip Pape  1:03:37

I agree it and don't discount the fact that there are a lot of guys like me who are coaches are getting into coaches who listen to guys like you who are also learning to be better coaches. And you're basically exponentially you know, making a bigger impact that way.

 

Jeff Hoehn  1:03:49

Yeah, absolutely, man. Yeah, yeah, that too, right. Yeah, you definitely don't you don't think about that, too. So that's, that's great to hear. Yeah.

 

Philip Pape  1:03:55

Yeah. Cool, man. So I think you know what's coming next, because you obviously are well prepared and looked at my bullet list of topics. But What question did you wish I had asked, and what is your answer?

 

Jeff Hoehn  1:04:05

Oh, man, I did see this one. And I was like, You know what, maybe we'll run out of time on this one. So what question do I think you do? I wish you would have asked me that you did it. And what's my answer? So I think it would be what is my favorite sport? Okay. All right. personal question.

 

Philip Pape  1:04:21

Is, is that what we want? Is that Well, I wouldn't have thought to ask them, so yeah, go for it. What's your favorite? So

 

Jeff Hoehn  1:04:27

it's hockey. I love hockey. My favorite team is the St. Louis Blues. So I'm a big hockey fan. And I play I play once I play roller hockey once a week and so that's kind of like my my cardio. So that would be my that would be my question. Kind of a cop out on that one. But

 

Philip Pape  1:04:39

not at all, man. No, it's good to learn more about you for sure. Hockey. It's funny. I grew up in Florida, so I didn't grow up watching hockey. But then I went to I went to Rensselaer Polytechnic. It's an engineering school in New York, and they were Division One hockey team. So there's nothing like like watching hockey in person is awesome for people listening. It's great.

 

Jeff Hoehn  1:04:57

It is so I'm from St. Louis, Missouri. So I think Got might have just said that but St. Louis Blues my team but man, I'll tell you what if you've ever been to a hockey game, gotta go it's for kind of easy. Where do you where do you live at now?

 

Philip Pape  1:05:07

I'm in Connecticut. Connecticut. Gotcha. Or no no professional sports here. Yeah, right. Just resurrecting that. Yeah. Cool, man. Yeah, actually the final four right Yukons in there with Miami and because I'm from Miami and a canes fan, and I also have to root for UConn. It's a little bit of a conflict up here. Yeah.

 

Jeff Hoehn  1:05:24

Well, I guess this is now you get to find out who you're really rooting for.

 

Philip Pape  1:05:27

I guess. So. Whoever My wife tells me. No, that's That's true. All right, man. So where can listeners learn more about you? Yeah.

 

Jeff Hoehn  1:05:34

So podcasts like you mentioned my muscle connection. Three, three episodes a week, I have a guest once a week as well to Instagram is where I'm most active. So Jeff HOEH en underscore. And so those would be the top two places that I'm that I'm most active on and where I would push people to cool.

 

Philip Pape  1:05:53

I'll do that. I'll put that in the show notes podcast for sure. Which is an easy request because you're already listening to a podcast, just go follow his. And then IG Jeff Payne, underscore. Alright man, it's been an awesome conversation. Really appreciate you coming on the show.

 

Jeff Hoehn  1:06:06

Ya know, I appreciate you having me on. It's like we said like I said off air. It's always interesting to be on the guest side of things, but it's always fun to chat. And I honestly feel like this one by pretty quickly so much introductions man and I love what you're doing and yeah, keep it up.

 

Philip Pape  1:06:20

Likewise, learn from the best, sir take care of you. If you've been inspired by today's interview, and are ready to take action and build momentum on your health and fitness journey, just schedule a free 30 minute nutrition momentum call with me using the link in my show notes. I promise not to sell or pitch you on anything, but I will help you gain some perspective and guidance so we can get you on the right track toward looking and feeling your best