Meet: Sports Endurance and Nutrition Coach Paul Cadman

This year was going to be a “big one” for Paul Cadman. As an accomplished sportsman, nutritionist and coach to high performance sports people, he is passionate about enabling both himself and athletes to reach their potential. After winning the Coast to Coast, Two-day Tandem with fellow MitoQ Adventure Team Racer, Emma Boyle, Paul had his sights set on winning a place at the World Aqua-Bike championships. Then 2020 happened.

Luckily for us, this has freed up some of his precious time and he has joined the MitoCrew to write articles designed to empower you to perform at your peak. We are hoping to share with you lots of the insights he has learnt over his impressive career, to help you power your every day. Be sure to keep an eye out for these articles but first, who is Paul and why is he such a big advocate of MitoQ?

Where it began

While Paul Cadman hesitates to call himself a lifetime athlete, but 30 years of sports achievements would disagree. From a young age, Paul has had a strong interest in all types of sport and exercise, throwing himself into any opportunity that arose. For many years football was his game of choice and he competed at a high level in both New Zealand and the UK. After returning to New Zealand, Paul spent a weekend “drinking beers” and watching a friend do the Ironman triathlon. After a few more of those beers, he vowed that it would be him doing it the next year.

Despite not having swum in a pool since he was a kid, never having run a marathon or even raced a triathlon before, Paul wrote himself a plan and started training. “I’ll never forget getting into the pool and not being able to swim one 50 metre length” he says. True to his word, he successfully completed his first Ironman that next year and then the following 8-9 years also. Since then he has competed in endurance events all over the world. But it was that first year of Ironman that really set off his spark for a holistic approach to training. “You must have the building blocks of health and wellness in order to perform.”

A change of career

Paul’s own experience of training soon combined with working in large corporates and seeing the positive effects of instilling wellbeing-based practices in that environment, and he began to informally coach a few “mates” on the side. Then, around six years ago, Paul decided he wanted to spend more time at home with his son and took a step back from his corporate role. His interest in health and wellbeing was ever increasing and with this shift in focus, Paul decided he needed to add a couple of credentials to back him up so went back to study. “I really wanted to enable people to be fit and healthy and well,” says Paul. In a few short years he became an Ironman University qualified coach, holds a Graduate Certificate in Nutrition, as well as a BBS Major Sports Management.

His belief that in order to succeed you not only have to be physically fit but mentally and nutritionally as well, formed the bases of his business Elevate Coaching.

Coaching athletes to perform

At Elevate Coaching, Paul believes that to be an effective coach you need to know what makes people tick and what motivates them. His coaching is focussed on achieving your goals by providing customised and structured programs while ensuring training fits your lifestyle, is motivating and fun. This could be to race an endurance event like Ironman or it could be to ensure that you have the energy to play with the kids once you get home from work. He is driven by seeing people achieve and this fuels him to keep getting better. “If you have a curious mindset, then you are always learning,” says Paul. It’s the reason he continues to work on research projects with MitoQ and its potential to help athletes attain individual peak performance. Paul himself takes MitoQ every day and swears by its benefits for athletic performance and general health and wellness.

In working with the MitoQ Adventure Racing Team, Paul uses MitoQ in conjunction with the biomarkers of heart rate variability to influence training programs and improve performance. Meaning endurance can be increased, consistency is maintained, and recovery times can be reduced, leading to incremental performance gains and less down-time.

What’s next?

What’s next for Paul? Well, currently he’s recovering from hip surgery, which has pushed his focus away from his own ambitions and onto helping others succeed. He says he would love to return to compete in the Coast to Coast, the best race he’s ever done, grow his business, spend more time with his family and continue to work with and experiment with MitoQ.

“Just think that as cliché as it sounds, today could be your last day. Holy shit! Do everything you can now and just cherish what you’ve got,” says Paul.