NFL MVP Patrick Mahomes | WHOOP Podcast

[Music] all right patrick welcome to the wook podcast yeah man i appreciate you all having me now this is exciting i've been a big fan of your career today and everything that you've accomplished it's amazing now i understand your your mother requires that people call you patrick and not pat is that right yeah it's uh it's funny my dad she says is pat and i'm patrick and she said that since i was a little kid so she if you want to be my mom's good side is patrick's were the way to go i think i've always called you patrick so i think i'm on the right track now your father pat mahomes professional baseball player 11 years in the major league baseball um in the mlb what was it like for you uh growing up having a professional athlete as a father you know it was really cool i mean i think now when i look back at it i have more perspective of how cool it was at the time i was just going to the baseball field shagging and checking fly balls in the outfield hitting the cages and everything like that and just enjoying life but as i look back now and see all those different people that i met and all the different great athletes that i got to see every single day it gives me a perspective of how to be a great athlete how to go out there and make myself better every single day it seems like there's got to be an advantage in growing up around professional athletes right like in some ways it makes being a pro athlete seem a little bit more accessible is that was that the case for you at all for sure i mean i think that's one part of it is i i grew up and that that's i've always envisioned i was gonna be a professional athlete and i thought that was the way i was gonna go and not really having a backup plan like that was how i was gonna spend my life but then at the same time seeing like the great athletes and how hard they work i think that's where i i really learned the most is you can you see guys like alex rodriguez and derek jeter hit home runs and make all these plays but you don't see how they put three four hours every single day before a game just working on the fundamentals and i think that's what kind of got me to where i'm at knowing that i have to put in that work if i want to be where i want to be at just the consistency and the grind of it right and understanding that yeah and i think one thing that always sticks out to me is i remember when i was young uh my dad used to make me hit all the tea a lot and whenever i got to like coach and regular kid pitch and stuff like that i never wanted to hit off the tee well then i went to when he got in the rangers i saw alex rodriguez and he's mvp doing all this different stuff and every single day he's hitting all the tea to start off his day just working on the fundamentals and that just that really stuck with me forever knowing that you get no matter how good you get you always have to work on those base fundamentals if you want to be great and that you know i've seen that across like every sport that we've worked in just the consistency like that of doing these simple things a lot of golfers too it's really interesting the things they'll do before they even hit a ball it it is and uh you don't want to do you don't want to do the little things sometimes you want to just go out there and play and have fun but at the end of the day those little things are what make you so successful and that's stuff that i work on now every single day now you envisioned becoming a professional athlete at what point did did it register that it was going to be football because i understand in high school you almost you almost quit football is that true yeah it was i actually i went on like a little sophomore day or whatever it was at the university of texas and they had kind of sent me over to play safety and i knew i wasn't going to be a safety or anything like that um and so on the ride back home uh my dad said he's like you should just focus on baseball and basketball because that's the way you're gonna go and i thought about it and i i just more than anything i just said one i didn't want to not be there playing with all my all my buddies and when they were in football season and so i just went out there and tried out quarterback and i didn't think i was gonna be a professional quarterback until probably after my sophomore year at college oh wow i actually went in thinking i was gonna play football and then i was gonna play baseball as well and then after three years i was gonna go play baseball um and then after my sophomore year college uh coach kingsbury um he came up to me and he was just like i think if you focus on football uh for one off season that you'll get drafted and i was like it sounds good to me and i focused on it and the next year i got drafted it's pretty amazing i mean just i mean i wonder what happens in your life if that if you never have that conversation with your coach you know it's like it's interesting just the impact that a few moments along the way can have yeah and then having people and the right people that can give you that great advice that that won't look down upon whatever decision that you do make but give you the advice of saying this is what i think you can take a next step but this is where i think you can improve and you can really take that in and then go and make your own decision and end up where you're at so 2017 you get drafted what did that moment feel like well also we're just coming off the nfl draft right now what did that moment feel like for you it was awesome um when i entered the the draft process that i got like a second or third round grade from the draft advisory board which is usually pretty accurate um and so i kind of just told myself as i these next few months i'm gonna put everything i have into making my body be in the best shape possible my conditioning how the way i eat everything like that and i worked i worked my tail off and i was able to get drafted and then the 10th pick overall and so just to make that climb and um to know that all that hard work that i'd put in was was paying off it kind of jump started my career of knowing that that's how i need to work at all times if i want to continue to be successful now were you pissed that nine teams passed on you well i didn't think about it i didn't think about it at all i think you look back at stuff like that now and you see stuff like that um but at the time all i wanted to do was get drafted to a good team and be in a good city and i got lucky enough that the the chiefs jumped from 27 to 10. they were already a successful team and and they were able to get me and it was the team that i wanted to go to and i got drafted at the top ten and i got to go learn from a great coach and so the first year you played behind alex smith he had had great success you said that it was a good learning experience for you playing behind him and then uh you get your first game at the end of the season what was that like what was that moment where you were finally starting an nfl game i think it was it was kind of the same as the draft night i think uh i learned so much behind alex where i was just sitting that that room every single day just taking it as much as possible preparing like i was going to play even though i got to the game and never got to get in the game but i was preparing and working and doing all this different stuff and then to get that last game and to go out there and have some success and and and then be so much better from the preseason to the end of the season and so much more comfortable it just kind of the same thing it told me that all that hard work was paying off all that stuff that i put in every single day was was was getting me to where i needed to be at and uh i'm thankful for alex uh because he was such a good dude and taught me so much even though he didn't have to um and it helped me be so much better prepared whenever i got in the football game you strike me as someone who's who's very focused on the moment like you seem like you're a very present person is that something you think about like you know really focusing about what you're doing in this moment are you conscious of the fact that you're so present i think i think i just try not to let any day or moment go to waste i think that's the biggest thing is i understand that we're not it's not you don't get to do some of the stuff that i've been able to do and it's not just everybody gets those opportunities so if i'm going to be in that moment or having that opportunity i'm going to embrace it and try to get the most out of it and uh i was able to even when i'm training or doing stuff like that i know that i need to get this training in and be in this moment because it's going to help me further on down the line and know why i'm doing it not just here doing it for no reason so it's been it's been cool to be able to enjoy and be in two super bowls now win one lose one and just get to see both sides of it now and then hopefully be able to find a way to work my way back and find a way to get to another one how much of of your success as a player have you almost envisioned before it happens you know you you listen to many great athletes talk about visualizing success visualizing holding the trophy visualizing winning certain awards is that part of the way you uh sort of train on the mental side i do for sure that's big for me it always has been even like before games just sitting there thinking about plays in the game thinking about stuff that can happen and situations and then if you watch me before a game like early like three or four hours before the game i'm just walking the field and just watching and like visualizing the play happening and throwing the ball to kelsey or tyreek and them making the plays happen and then like you said visualizing the success visualizing going out there and winning the championships and winning the super bowl um and and being able to embrace those moments when i'm in when i'm in them because i've already seen it happen before so when you visualize it are you almost picturing it through your own eyes are you seeing yourself in the third person i i actually i picture through my own eyes okay so it's almost like i'm there and i'm holding the trophy and i'm looking around and seeing all the different people that my loved ones my friends my family and just being there with them in that moment and then like i said then whenever you it does happen you can really just enjoy it and you've already seen it happen before and you're not shocked you're you're in the moment i think about it a lot from a business sense and you know picturing the next stage of a business or the next stage of growth and the way i think about it personally is you're trying to remember your future you know like we just you know we did a shoot and i can remember that perfectly can you think about your future with the same clarity and you strike me as someone who's able to do that where you can really picture that moment that's about to happen yeah i think it's been since i was little too i mean i've always envisioned not not necessarily being a football player but being a professional athlete having a family um being able to kind of bring my family with me and and then be able to enjoy all these things together um and it's it's it's happened so far and i'm gonna try to continue to get better and better and and try to continue to have success so not only helps out me but helps out my family as well now you have this mvp season in 2018 and you lose the afc championship game to brady and the patriots brady talks to you after the game what was that moment like what did you guys talk about yeah it's kind of it's funny it's the same thing i mean you you go through the season and you put in that work and you you go and you win a lot of football games no one expects you to be in that situation and you end up barely losing an afc championship game to the team that ends up winning the super bowl and uh for for tom to come and kind of just it wasn't like he said a lot a lot to me he just kind of said and i i appreciate how hard you work i can tell what type of guy that you are about how how you act and how you you uh you handle yourself out there on the field and i can tell your teammates like you and uh he just said just continue to do that he goes continue to do that and you'll continue to have success and i think coming from a guy like that who's won seven championships now and had success everywhere he's been at and people that play with him always love them it just shows that you're doing stuff the right way and i mean um to have that kind of validation it just continues the work and it continues making you every single day go in and and put in that work because you know that that's what it takes to be at the level that he's at it must have been a validating moment for you even though you're you defeated this recognition that someone you know who maybe you're aspiring to check track down from a record standpoint you know appreciates what you're doing thanks holly of you yeah 100 and uh he's a guy who's done the right way and he's he's won a lot a lot every single year and like you said it's that's someone that i'm trying to to get to as my career goes on i'm looking at all the records and things that he has said and i'm trying to get to that to get to that point and so it's uh it's definitely validating obviously not at the time when you when you lose the football game but when you go to that offseason knowing that you gotta if you continue to do this canadian put in that work that you can have a chance to get to that level at some point now going into the next season which obviously was an incredible success you guys won the super bowl were there specific things that you changed about your routine about your mental preparation going into those playoffs yeah i think i do that every year i try to find me and bobby strip my trainer we try to find different things that i can get better at for me the first thing was nutrition um coming from college where you're kind of just eating i mean i love chipotle being like chipotle every day and then like trying to find different ways to stay healthy as you possibly can to now i have a chef and all this different type of stuff we try to find ways to eat healthier and more of my meals we try to find ways to train my body to be in certain situations where i can make throws from different arm angles and different places and then mentally on the mental side of the game i try to make sure that i was better there and i think that was the biggest step that i took is i had that full year of kind of just having that inbox those files of different coverages and defenses that i had seen um and then going back to that next that next year we went and won the super bowl i could kind of pull from that and see oh i've seen this look before and this is what i need to do and do it to combat it and uh that was something i think helped us out a ton as we made that run in the super bowl yeah it's interesting for you so much of it must be pattern recognition right of just seeing the same play seeing the same players and recognize them under these super intense moments and i imagine if you can visualize those two beforehand it's almost like you're getting more and more reps without even having to do them yeah exactly and i think uh the the good thing and the bad thing about being so uh so successful as offense as we were as we were was we saw a ton of different defenses a lot of teams threw a lot of different looks at us a lot of different adjustments and i think at first it was challenging because you're trying to figure out the ways but now i've seen so much stuff now that i can pull from that and there's there's been points of game this last year where i've said i've never seen this defense my first year and i've already visualized and seen it and this is what i need to do to have success where i didn't have success that first year with it that's amazing so now how long have you been on woo i've been on boop now for probably a year and a half i think somewhere somewhere in that range um it started off with with bobby uh my trainer my trainer he got me on whoop uh because he was tracking my sleep my recovery making sure i'm not going out and and not sleeping all night um and so uh and then i then as of this last like year through this last offseason to to to this off season i've really focused in on trying to make my recovery score better uh figuring out what makes me sleep better what makes me recover better and uh then just tracking my strains and how like how i can kind of combat that with what i'm eating and stuff like that what are certain things that you've found help um from a bedtime routine standpoint the first one i mean obviously the simplest one is getting more sleep i mean more time in bed sleeping um and then we've we've done different things of taking different uh like magnesium pills and and different stuff like that to help me get better deep sleep better rem sleep um and then until i until the baby i was trying to cut down my disturbances as much as possible so i was i was trying to find ways that i i wasn't waking up more at the at night making the room a little colder so i can kind of sleep through through stuff like that um and then eating earlier and eating a little healthier usually helps out a little bit so you shared your your whoop data with us for with this uh for this which is totally fascinating so i'll give you some some quick hits so your you're averaging rem sleep 121 a night and slow wave sleep 144 that's that's actually really good especially for nfl players we see normally lower levels than that so that means you're getting high quality sleep um every night uh in general mondays were your lowest uh recovery day yeah so you were averaging like about 45 percent recovery on mondays which makes sense yeah you're coming off the game yesterday exactly uh yeah for sure i mean coming up the game on sunday and then your body just kind of trying to re-calibrate and get yourself back from a strain standpoint your strain was steadily increasing over the course of the season so as you started to get into november and december and january like your average strain was steadily increasing and uh and it's pretty interesting that this probably won't surprise you but the more passing attempts that you had the higher your strain would be that it makes sense um and it makes sense later in the season obviously the intensity of the season picks up later this season um and then like you said the past which i guess you could be running too but the more passionate tempo obviously you're more focused you're trying to make something happen and i you know i scramble some so that probably helps out in the strain a little bit for sure and by the way your strains on game days are high so these are we're talking like over 20 strains so for people listeners who don't know what 20 strain is strains out of 21. it's exponentially hard to go up at and a lot of people who will do like their first marathon for example get around a 20 strain yeah so the fact that you're getting like a 20.5 you had a 20.7 uh in in the super bowl like these are really high strains that that are hard to recover from so your average non-game day strain is 13.9 so that's like a hard workout pretty much for for people who are listening to this and then your average game day strain is 19.3 but as you got into the playoffs it was consistently over 20. so that's like really really high strain um one thing that's interesting is looking at your heart rate during games you have your heart rate jacked during the quarters so like first half second half but you actually do a very good job having your heart rate drop during half time yeah what are you doing during halftime i think i'm i'm pretty i'm pretty good at just kind of relaxing and just i'm getting so much info like we will look at the tablets and look at looks that we got during the during they're in the first half versus what we think we're getting the second half i'll listen to what the coaches say but i think the biggest thing is i just i'm just relaxed i just i just get back kind of rest take in everything that they're telling me and then kind of re rebuild myself back up going into that that second half and i think i even do that pretty good on the on the sideline is if you ever look at me on the sideline i'm pretty just calm just sitting there obviously taking all the info in that we're getting um from the coaches but at the same time knowing that i'm gonna have to go back out there and the intensity will have to pick up yeah you've got a great calm way about you on the sidelines actually i've noticed that and i and i bet it rubs off on your teammates too because when they see you go down two touchdowns or go down a touchdown and then the leader's just super calm and then can turn on that fire i think that's terrific yeah it's uh i think it's it's that mindset it's all you can control is that next play like you like no matter what happened if it was a good play the last play or a bad player what the score is all you can control is that next play that you're having and i've always had that mindset of no matter what happened just just focus on that next play so this is an interesting graph so this is your strain as it builds over the course of the season so you can see like september and october it's lower and then all of a sudden like over the course of the season i mean those are big peaks and these are your two bye weeks the two bye weeks have these huge drops and straight that is that is hilarious with the bye weeks i mean it does make so much sense i mean as obviously every game is important but september and october you're kind of filling it out you're filling out what what you are as a team and then as you get to november and december and obviously january february you your intensity picks up because you're trying to win those football games so uh so the other thing is tuesday you have the lowest strain sunday you have the highest um the the other one that i found pretty interesting is if we just look at um some of your your biggest games of the season let's pull this up here wait a sec you had a 91 recovery when you uh torched the poor jets 30 35 to 9. 91 recovery you went 31 for 42 416 yards five tds which is the season high passer rating now when you wake up in the morning will you look at the recovery the day of the game and think about it a little bit i do and then bobby texts me every single every single day before and tells me about recovery score but i do it's like the first thing i wake up try to wait for it to to kind of get the iso and process the info in and i try to get the look at it because i want to know how i'm feeling how my body's feeling um where i'm at and usually if i'm feeling pretty relaxed it's usually a pretty good score yeah now if you see uh like so there you had a 91 recovery you also you had at one point this season a 16 recovery 18 recovery against the bills in the afc championship game that means i wasn't sleeping well at night i was i was definitely thinking about everything and too much visualizing before the before and uh too much uh adrenaline pumping so when you see that in the morning what do you do so that that doesn't bother you how do you think about it in the context of winning yeah well well the good thing about that one is it was a later game um so i could kind of i went and got breakfast um and then i went back and just kind of laid there for a little bit and just kind of let my body relax usually when the earlier games you want to have a good recovery score for sure um but uh if you have a later game you kind of get back down lay down kind of let your body relax let your mind relax and kind of get it off the football game just a little bit and kind of focus in on just kind of getting your body in the best best possible place i love that i mean i've heard some folks say like oh i'm not sure if i want to look at it because it might affect my psyche but i think the more advanced way to think about it is i'll know the information and it's not going to change my mindset for winning but i'm going to use that information to treat my body appropriately leading up to the game yeah you have to i mean your body i mean you can you can do so much with your mind obviously but your body at the end of the day if it's in prime shape you can go out there and be the best you can possibly be at uh at whatever you're doing so um you i always check mine and just try to make sure i know where where i'm at uh physically and then mentally where i need to prepare myself if i need to do stuff a little bit extra on the mental side or i'm able to let my body kind of do what it needs to do physically so 56 recovery for uh the super bowl that's you know pretty solid i mean maybe you'd want to have been green but i i doubt that affected your performance no it was uh obviously i wish i played a little bit better this super bowl but i know it was uh i was ready to go for sure i mean i was ready to play um be i think being in it the year before prepared me a little bit more that first year you get out there and you're you're just everywhere because there's so much going on um but having that experience definitely prepared me to be in that game and i can tell by the recovery score i guess yeah now uh you've gotten really involved in the business world it seems like in the last 12 18 months you're an investor in whoop you've invested in other businesses um how's that side of things for you and sort of growing into being a successful businessman yeah i think the the biggest thing i've always done is or what i have done and i will continue to do is just i kind of invest in things that i that i'm passionate about and things that i think help help me every single day so like you said whoop i check my whoop every single day i take my whoop scores i look at the recovery i look at the strain i look at all the different analytics that it has to help prepare my body to be in the best possible shape there's other ones like hyper ice and and there's there's ones like bio steel and there's all the different stuff that i use and that i love using i invest in that because i know that i care about it i believe in it um and that's something that i that i i'll continue to do because i don't want to put my time more than my money my time into something that i don't really care about i want to be stuff that i care about that i believe in yeah i respect that and in a way it seems like the the smartest investment strategy for you too because if you use the products and you like them then there's an authentic sort of story behind it yeah exactly and then i'm not when i'm when i'm telling people about it uh it's it's not like i'm just making stuff up it's from an authentication it's literally exactly what i do every single day and it's what i use and it's and it's it's the stuff that i drink or whatever it is um okay we got to let you get out of here pretty soon now um let's play a quick game if this is the rapid fire um we're gonna play good for football bad for football okay so so i'll say something and then you tell me whether you think it's good for football or bad all right so uh we'll start with a softball what do you think of a 43 year old winning the super bowl it's good for football it's good for me it's a good sign right he could play for a long time yeah no for sure all right what do you think of the difficulty of onside kicks it's good for football i believe that like if you're an on-site kick you better it's a low chance you can get it because you're in a desperate situation so you feel like you shouldn't be able to come back that easily no i mean obviously if i was on the other side of the equation i might like it but uh the uh i feel like if you put yourself in that situation you shouldn't have a a higher chance of coming back all right here's a phone penalties for excessive celebrations i think it's bad for football i think i think the fans want to see people celebrate and people i understand like the if they're really taunting someone but like if you're celebrating with your teammates and doing all different type of stuff like that i think it's it's fine i think so too some of the more memorable moments in in football have been these like crazy celebrations you look back at like at all times like tio with the popcorn and like joe horn with like the cell phone like that stuff's iconic and that stuff that people love to see okay what do you think of the playoff seedings so right now you can have teams that have lower records oh yeah i know you're like um another way to think about it is you just take you take the top eight teams or whatever i think it's good for football because if you like well at least for us yeah the first thing we talk about is when the afc west that's that's the first thing it's not about you when the afc west when the afc win the super bowl and so i i mean i think it's good football what do you think of seventeen game season ah it's gonna be tough on that record it's gonna definitely be it's gonna be a i'll just say it's gonna be a definitely a a change it's it's a it's a lot of games on our body i mean you gotta think about all the guys that already get injured late at late part of the season um it'll be i think it's gonna be bad for the the players but it might be pr it might it'll be good for the money so i mean yeah wherever you rank that uh okay how about coaches challenges let's go for football you think so yeah it's it's uh i think you i mean there's just some calls i mean everyone's human how do you know in a split second if it's in or out of bounds so my perspective coming from a technology point of view is that at this point there should be like an artificial intelligence layer of software just sitting on top of instant replay yeah that could get every play right i've always i've always thought about the uh the old i feel like the chip in the ball is that's got to happen at some point where you like if you cross the line it just tells you touchdown totally and so part of me thinks that the coaching coaches challenges and things like that are less about getting it right and more about the drama yeah yeah should they challenge you're not challenging we gotta get a commercial break but it also is like the whole human error thing it's a lot kind of like baseball balls and strikes like it's it's just part of the game like like if you if you like the biggest thing to me is when they get in the pile and like by the goal line there's literally no way you can tell if he's in the end zone or not and like you said that's just whatever they call it that's totally chipping the ball and and and more i think instant replay software but anyway i'm sure it'll happen soon enough i think the sport's in pretty good hands with you uh with you at the helm patrick this has been a real pleasure man and i appreciate you man always man yeah for sure all right thanks for coming on

Channel: WHOOP

Views: 13,963

Keywords:

Id: azP_kImHHR8

Length: 28min 3sec (1683 seconds)

Published: Wed May 19 2021