July 09, 2021
An interview with Pat Woodcock a former NFL and CFL player. Pat is a strength, speed, conditioning coach, personal trainer, nutrition/supplement coach, and speaker.
For the full interview please listen to the most recent CM Group- Free Lunch Podcast, Episode 59 “Gratitude, Meditations, Touchdowns & Health”.
Colin and Greg: Pat, let's get things rolling. Tell us your story. How did you end up where you are today?
Pat: Well, I kind of took a long, circuitous route to get here. Like Colin mentioned, I was fortunate enough to have an eight year career playing professional football and moving around to a couple of different cities. Over the course of my playing career, I began to take more interest in the strength-and-conditioning-side of what I was doing in the off season. I didn't want to just show up and do what I was told to do, I wanted to take more of a vested interest in what I was doing on the strength-and-conditioning-side to make sure that I was at the top of my game. By the time I finished my career, I had acquired a little bit of knowledge to go along with all the experience and training that I had. I wanted to make use of that and parlay it and really be able to transition that and give it to sort of the next generation of athletes coming up and hopefully give them an opportunity to achieve some of the same things that I did.
I opened up a gym. A training facility called the Live Performance Academy here in Ottawa, and that's been going for about 12 years now. Over the last several years, I've just kind of naturally transitioned into training more guys like us. That’s guys who are businessmen, guys who are busy with work, busy with families, but still want to look and feel great and have all the energy to do all the things that's required of them. It's been a really interesting transition into moving from sort of competitive athletes into “high performance men”, as I like to call it right now.
Colin and Greg: What do you think is the biggest misunderstanding people have when it comes to losing weight or getting into shape?
Pat: I think one of the biggest problems that people have, especially the high performance type personalities, is that it's an all-or-nothing deal: “If I'm going to lose weight, I have to jump in and I have to go seven days a week and I have to work out for two hours a day and I can't eat any carbs. It has to be an all or nothing perfect performance in order for me to gain any results.” Oftentimes that's going to be much more to your detriment than it is to your benefit. Really what it is, is having a plan that fits into your lifestyle and enhances your lifestyle and doesn't provide you with additional stress, but rather, takes stress away and incorporates all the aspects that you need to get the results that you want.
Colin and Greg: The link that I had found was the significant relationship between diet and exercise. Whereas, as you pointed out, you can work out all day long, but if you're not eating the right things, it doesn't really get you anywhere. Can you expand on that a little bit?
Pat: When we're twenty five, we can get away with eating pizza seven days a week and still get great results. But as we get older things slow down and things just don't function the way they used to. Being able to tie everything together and have your nutrition plan really match what you're doing training-wise and also match what you're doing in the rest of your lifestyle is the biggest piece in terms of really accelerating results and making them last. What we focus on is obviously the training, but certainly creating a nutrition plan that is super simple and fits into your lifestyle and is something that is sustainable in the long term. We're not doing any elimination, which can get you results, but it doesn't last in the long term. Really, what we want to do is find the sustainable plan that fuels your body and gives you the nutrients and the energy that you need to obviously fuel your training, but also to keep your brain healthy and to help you sleep better and to do all the things that make us function better. Those are the things that are going to translate into fat loss, muscle gain, better energy, better sleep, all those things that we want to have as a result of a training program.
Stay happy, stay safe, stay well!
The CM Group