Next up in our irregular series of blogs we're going to introduce you to the next member of the team here at Myokinetics. We've asked each of these wonderful people to answer the same 10 questions on a range of diverse topics in an effort to give you an insight into how they tick.
So without further ado, can we introduce to you Paul McAvoy who is our “Mr Torture”!
Q1. Hi Paul! Nice to talk to you and thanks for your time. To start with can you tell us where you were born?
I was born in Pine Town, South Africa during an especially regressive apartheid regime before my parents moved me at the age of 7 to Bangor, Northern Ireland where I whiled away the years under an especially aggressive sectarian conflict. Not to mention the weather was shit.
Q2. What would you say is your most grandiose sporting achievement?
Completing an Ironman triathlon in Tenby would count, but to my mind, my favourite achievement came during my University days at a game of American Football for the Strathclyde hawks where a hapless running back, who may have weighed about 8 stone wet through, ran straight at a slightly bigger, infinitely more aggressive running back version of me, weighing around 14 anabolic steroid packed stone. Having tackled said running back, I realised he was on my shoulder and ran him, ball and all, back through his offensive line and all the way to the touchdown area. Where I put him down. Grandiose? Maybe not! Funny at the time, definitely.
Q3. What is your favourite Sunday dinner?
I am a fan of eating. In fact, one of the main reasons that I exercise is so that I can indulge my love affair with all things digestive. To that end, deciding upon a favourite food for any time or place is inherently difficult for me as the mood maketh the food so to speak. That said any competently made meal with sufficient seasoning and cooking time will do, including foods as far ranging as escargot and horse meat, but stopping short (in my experience) of poorly boiled tripe and lambs brain soup.
Q4. You can invite three guests (anyone, dead or alive) to lunch, who is lunching with you?
Ordinarily I’d say that I don’t like anyone enough to want to endure a lunch with them. But on occasional good days when I can just about tolerate the human race, then I might bring myself to share my time with a few of them so, to play the game, I’d be inclined to share a meal with (assuming we’re talking about famous folk):
Lenin – because when I visited Moscow his tomb was shut for his annual re-embalming
Buddha – because I’d like to know how he feels about the orange robes, chanting and bells & whistles
Micky Flanagan – because with those other two, I’d be in desperate need of a good laugh
Q5. How many and what injuries have you endured?
Numerous minor injuries including pulled hamstrings, broken knuckles, torn intercostal muscles, staves and sprains conducive to a life of excessive exercise and a love of contact sports. Most significantly a fairly severe slipped lumbar disc to left hand side with extreme sciatic symptoms and paralysis of the muscles on the outside of the foot / lower leg causing mild foot drop that took well over 2 years to resolve.
Q6. Your most embarrassing drinking story that you have personally experienced?
After an early adulthood of more alcohol and drug misuse than one liver should expect to tolerate the question should be prefaced by ‘of those that you can remember’. With that in mind a number stand out. I’m particularly fond of some early university stories including one involving a bag of frozen chicken feet stolen from a Chinese restaurant freezer; and another that involved being slumped against the glass door of the Clydesdale Bank in Argyle Street (Glasgow), letting loose a torrent of urine that thundered against the door while peering blearily down at the reflection of my shiny black work shoes.
I remember wondering how my trainers had become black work shoes and, in confusion, I slowly lifted my head from the door, only to meet the disdainful glower of the banks security guard who was standing a mere 6 inches away from me. On the other side of the glass door.
Another late night encounter with David Baddeil while he was touring (in the early days of his fame) actually made it into his stand-up routine. It goes along the lines of: modestly famous stand up, has finished gig and is making way back to hotel. Seriously pissed Irishman and mate approach from a distance. Pissed up Irishman says the following to mate:
‘That’s that bloke, he’s famous, he’s on the telly...I’m telling you it’s him’
Mate says ‘who?’
Irishman says, ‘it’s him!!!’
Baddeil approaches
Irishman says ‘It’s you isn’t it. I know you...’ (Baddeil looks self-consciously for a way to exit situation).
‘...what’s your name again?’
Oh, and there’s the bog standard drunk, naked, locked out of hotel room going to toilet in middle of night story. Although in my situation, the whole thing was made a little more interesting by virtue of 1. it being a management training event for the company that I worked for at the time and 2. there being no overnight reception at the hotel we were staying at. The result of these two factors was that when I stumbled to reception I couldn’t find a master key for my room, but I could find a number of keys for different rooms, so I picked one at random.
I staggered my naked drunken body over to the room in question. I inserted the key in the lock. I opened the door, swaying slightly, and stood silhouetted in the light from outside the room. As my eyes adjusted to the dark there was a scream from the rooms terrified occupant. Sitting bolt upright in the bed with her sheets pulled up around her chin was my CEO’s Personal Assistant. That was a good night.
Q7. Favourite holiday destination?
Morocco – I went there to escape from myself and other people and I rediscovered simple friendship among people who have virtually nothing.
Q8. Your most loved or supported sports team or sport?
I don’t participate in team sports and I rarely watch sport whether team or individual. I enjoy the sports that I do and have done and I respect other’s for the ones that they choose to do. Spectators who watch sport without participation I don’t understand. My most loved sport would be whichever one I’m doing at the time that I’m doing it.
Q9. You have to give up meat or dairy, which one?
Meat
Q10. What is your Porn Star name? Take the name of your first pet and the name of the street you lived on when born = Porn Star Name
I can’t remember the street I was born to, but the one I spent most time being raised on was called Greenmount, my first pet was a cat whose name I also can’t remember but the first pet I can remember was called Joey. So that would be:
Joey Greenmount
And finally can you tell us a little about Paul McAvoy professional sports therapist, if you would...
My experience and expertise come not merely from qualifications. Everyone’s got those, it also comes from having lived long enough, and done enough physical activity badly (and I’ve done a lot of things badly as question 6 might attest to) to have experienced most of the issues that my clients have faced.
I’ve also had to fix those issues and the process of doing so, with all the rabbit holes that has led me down means that I know what works, what doesn’t and how long it can take to truly fix an injury. Especially if, as some might say ‘you’re doing it wrong’.
Book your consultation here: https://www.myokinetics.co.uk/