What I need is a challenge, the opportunity to become a greater fighter and a greater champion. What I need is to stand in front of my faithful fans in the octagon and prove to them that they’re right to support me. I want to foster pride. Respect is the title I seek.
MAVEN: 2) They’re cooperative: they know that goals are most easily and efficiently achieved when they work within a team approach.
After my loss to Matt Serra, I asked Firas to become my head coach. I’ve been undefeated since we joined forces. He’s quite intelligent, he adjusts to me, he doesn’t want to make me fit his mold, he doesn’t have a preconceived notion of what I should become as a fighter. Simply, he wants to give me what I need to become the best I can be—he’s not looking to create a copy of himself. This means that we work based on a system of growth that understands how learning comes from anywhere. I have different strengths and weaknesses than he does. We improve my strength and work on my weaknesses. He’s a brilliant man. I learn from guys like him, not just about fighting, but about life. I love learning from people. It’s very important to me.
A good fighter knows how to pick his entourage and fill it with qualified people. You need good people around you. I can’t negotiate a thing. I once made an offer to buy a condominium and I offered more than was being asked. Rodolphe would have told me right away how stupid that was. Being smart is knowing what you’re not good at, and finding someone who is. I have to be surrounded by people who are better than me. You need to hire to your weaknesses so you can focus on your strengths. I knew I could recover from the knee injury and re-enter the octagon because I’ve climbed that mountain before. Twice so far in my career, I’ve had to fight for and gain my world title—against Hughes and then against Serra. So I decided I would do it a third time, against Condit—just differently this time. Because I believe I can, and so do the people who are truly close to me.
MAVEN: 3) they’re hardworking: like Larry Holmes said, “Hard work ain’t easy, but it’s fair.”
My life isn’t very exciting most of the time, as I told you earlier in this book. I get up and I go to the gym to work out. Then I eat. Then I work out again, get a therapeutic massage—so I can work out again later—and then I eat more. Then I go back to sleep. That’s it for most days, and I love it. In fact, I wouldn’t know what to do other than follow this routine.
MAVEN: His greatest ability is his perseverance. There’s an understanding we have between us that results and success come from one place: hard work. We agree with Holmes. We think it’s fair: you get back what you put in. People can cheat or rob you of almost any possession, but hard work belongs to you, and you alone. Georges knows that better than anyone I’ve ever known or heard of. So Georges’s work ethic is his greatest gift.
Do you want to know what I like best about myself? The truth is, I’ve become “great” at maybe only one thing: dedication. I’ve never been the fastest, or the strongest, or the biggest, or the quickest, or the most powerful. In life, we all discover at some point or other that there’s someone else out there who’s better at any single thing than we are.
I’ve found a way to turn what some call hard work into a game and an exercise in efficiency. I turned garbage collection into a race because it’s good cardiovascular exercise, because it’s good power training, and because it makes the day go by faster. Efficiency for me is an obsession, an addiction. It not only helps me get stronger, but makes things simpler. It helps me transcend my momentary negative inclinations. It gets me to the gym when I don’t feel like going. The ancillary benefit is good habits. Food tastes better, too.
MAVEN: When Georges and I work together, our facade is very cold. We appear to be focused only on the training and the practice. Everywhere we train, there’s an audience of people watching every move, listening for every comment, every word. So you won’t see us have heart-to-heart chats or catch us crying together. Our facade is tough and cold. It has to be. We keep emotions in check, we don’t break down, and we hold each other by never showing fear. Our tender side is ours alone. We can’t let fear in because it creates a floodgate of emotion. There’s a time for emotion and there’s a time for concentration and hard work. I know Georges will keep his facade right up to the end. But I’ve seen him in the locker room, I’ve been with him when there are no walls, and I’ve heard him on his knees praying. That’s because, for part of his life, he’ll always be alone.
There is a side to Georges that almost nobody ever gets to see. But I’ve been there. I’ve seen him under fire. I’ve walked into the locker room at Tristar and he was in there, alone, after a training session. Close to the edge. I’ve seen him on his knees, holding his hands together and praying. As strong as Georges is, he’s extremely fragile. We all are.
The key to regular growth and steady improvement is to constantly change what you’re doing. Before the ACL injury, I have to admit that I’d grown tired and weary of my workout. It was tough going to the gym every day, and it was easy for my focus to be on anything except the work that needed to be done. I was in a rut and I knew it.
After my knee surgery my team and I decided to change my training approach completely. After looking around for the best postsurgical rehab and physiotherapy program, we found out about the Sport Science Lab (SSL) system. It’s pretty simple, and when you go to their website, it states quite simply that they’re trying to create the perfect athlete.
In my opinion, there are only a few trainers in the world who can deliver on that kind of promise. What I like best about the system is that it deviates from the popular philosophy that lifting heavy weights is the way to get strong. My interest is not in making my muscles bigger or stronger. My interest is in making my muscles smarter and more coordinated. The truth is that you don’t need a big frame or a large physique to generate force or be skillful. It’s actually the opposite. What you need is to refine your motor skills. The key for me is based on the balancing stability of the foot, its connection to the core, and in teaching my body to use the strength it already has and not allow it to dissipate.
It’s pretty easy if you look at it objectively. If you can already squat five hundred pounds, you’re strong, but will that always translate in the field when you’re playing football, soccer or basketball? Maybe not. When you’re lifting those weights, you’re perfectly balanced—or should be. You know the variables, and now you have to physically put the weight up or bring it down. But on the field of play, there’s an opponent with a plan of his own—a plan to throw you off balance.
When I was preparing for our rematch with Serra by watching tape, one thing that really stood out for me was that after he had surprised me, I lost my equilibrium—my balance was off as I rushed into counterattacks. I paid for my lack of understanding, my lack of balance.
Fluidity comes from sparring experience. It’s like a dance—you fake certain tactics, movements, and you keep your opponent guessing. You never offer a static target—you always have to keep moving. It’s like being hunted by a sniper—you don’t just stand there, you have to move and feint. Don’t make your opponent’s life easy. Don’t let him measure you up. In mixed martial arts, you see it all the time: a guy gets tired, slows down and soon goes static. Not long after that, he goes down, hard. Especially against a striker.
So the important thing is to teach your body to generate force in out-of-the-norm positions and postures. This doesn’t mean you get to stop lifting weights or building mass and strength, but it means that once you reach a certain power level, there are better ways of helping you reach optimal performance than just lifting more weight. If you’re an offensive lineman playing football, you’re going to need not just the power and size, but all the stability and balance you can get.
In my sport, throwing a punch when you’re on one foot is risky. It creates instability, and you have to push the punch harder to make it work. It’s like pushing a shopping cart with a wobbly wheel—it’s frustrating and inefficient. If you can throw the same punch and com
bine it with the ability to contract all of your muscles at the right time, you generate great power and maintain stability.
Stability is just so important—you need it to do anything. An easy example: when you go running without tied shoelaces, you trip. Generating all the speed in the world won’t help you; in fact, it will just increase your risk or injury. You have to allow your body to generate the force by putting it in a stable position at all times—not just when you’re running in a straight line.
There are two types of muscle groups:
• the prime movers: they do the bulk of the work, the lifting. They’re the larger muscles, like quads, pectorals, and glutes.
• the stabilizers: they keep your joints running.
Just remember this: you’re only as strong as your weakest link.
MAVEN: I’ve seen him after a fight in his euphoric state. Each time he wins, it’s like the first time, like a new event in his life. He never assumes the result will be in his favor. Georges knows that anybody can lose, anytime. It’s just a matter of probability. We look at it like a math problem: there’s always a chance of a different result, so let’s put probabilities on our side.
Everybody expects him to win. They expect perfection, something above and beyond what any human can do consistently. I’ve seen him on his knees whisper a sincere prayer. He doesn’t want to let anybody down.
The key to effective visualization is to create the most detailed, clear and vivid a picture to focus on as possible. The more vivid the visualization, the more likely, and quickly, you are to begin attracting the things that help you achieve what you want to get done.
I think it works best in a quiet place, a spot where you can relax. Breathing is important, so take slow, deep breaths. The goal here is to let go of stress and just focus on what you want to see inside your mind. Then create the story you want to aim for, think of all the little details—how they look, how people sound, what’s moving, colors, everything related to your senses.
It’s really not easy. On top of doing all these things, you have to stay positive and ignore the negative things that can happen. You have to let go of the obstacles that can bring you down, because you have no control over them. A lot of people waste energy worrying about the things they can’t control—that energy can be better used!
I read somewhere that sometimes it’s easier to start at the end and play the story backward—it helps you get rid of the obstacles because the whole story starts with your goal being achieved.
MAVEN: The key to Georges was to reach a point when there was no such thing as a glass half empty or half full. The glass is at half capacity, and that means something.
Losing to Serra allowed me to grow in wisdom by a hundred years. It got my head out of the clouds. It got me back to doing the things I needed to do to stay successful. I’m talking about a very basic level here. I stopped going out, I trained harder, I stopped a lot of chitchat with other people. I saw what I had and what I needed. I saw the illusion that had built up around me, that I was different from other fighters.
The first time we met in the octagon, I was way too overconfident. Fine. The second time, the risk was actually on the opposite end of the spectrum: the real issue this time was confidence and believing I could actually win. Some people were telling me to watch out and “make sure he doesn’t kick your ass again.” That wasn’t helpful advice. Sure, the intention was to make sure I didn’t get hurt or didn’t lose again, but the effectiveness of the advice was null and void. Luckily, they were wrong. The key for Serra Part II was simple: do not under- or overestimate him. The key was the Firas rule of capacity.
I find this is a really important lesson for young athletes, and it has to do with learning how to lose. Just because someone beat you badly the first time doesn’t mean history will repeat itself. Any piece of history is made up from a collection of actions, of factors that play a role in the final verdict.
After a great defeat, we ask ourselves: What could I have done better? We don’t ask ourselves: How could I have been stronger? We do this because the reason we lose is rarely ever physical.
When the reason for a loss is physical, the solution is simple: do more push-ups, run more intervals, lift more weights. But once you reach a certain level of performance, physical preparation must become secondary to mental and tactical preparation.
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: the first stage after losing a fight—and it could be anything you struggle with—is anger. But eventually, you have to accept the loss. Only then you can see things objectively. Only then you can observe your own mistakes, try solutions and improve.
There was no way I was going to approach the second fight the same way I went into the first one, but I needed to remember that so that I could focus on the important elements of winning.
One of the things I like best about Firas is that we talk about all kinds of things that have nothing to do with fighting. We chat about history, religion and especially philosophy. Firas is a true maven. The maven is a trusted expert. The maven understands, because the maven acquires a great deal of knowledge. And then the maven seeks to share it.
Here’s one of the earliest examples of what you might call a philosophical chat. Before the Serra fight, we started talking about the glass being half-empty or half-full, and the difference between the two. Because the half-glass example is the perfect way to illustrate my Serra fights.
For the first fight against Serra, I saw the glass as being half-full—I was sure I had what I needed to do the job, and more. For the second fight, Firas was afraid I’d see the glass as half-empty—that I’d give Serra too much credit for what happened the first time. He was afraid I’d let my fears change my approach, that I’d let my fears guide my actions. Neither of these is a winning proposition.
On a certain day, we shifted the focus from half-full and half-empty to something totally different. We started talking about capacity. We simplified the statement and took the interpretation out of it. We realized that the glass is at half its capacity, neither full nor empty. And what happened is that we started to manage risk practically, by looking at the facts instead of listening to people’s fears and emotions. We looked at Serra’s real strengths and real weaknesses, and we were honest about them.
So we learned to manage risk by focusing on our strategy to be aggressive rather than paralysis by analysis. This was important, because the time between the two Serra fights was really, really hard on me psychologically. After losing to Serra, a lot of people started wondering if I had a chin at all, and whether or not all of my success had been a fluke. It started in the media with certain journalists, but soon it trickled down everywhere, right into my head. I started wondering if I had a chin, if I could really take a punch, if I deserved to fight for another title. Again, I was haunted by the Serra loss for many, many months.
I didn’t get to fight Serra right after losing to him. That’s not how the system works. The system is based on an icy hill that takes you back down to the bottom, and you have to work your way back up. Luckily for me, I was able to hide my insecurity and lack of confidence and fight my way back to the proper mental state. The only way to ever truly get your confidence and swagger back, I’ve learned, is to fight for them.
In the ensuing fights, we had already decided to be different, and to use my arsenal of weapons better so that I could impose my rhythm from the start, and challenge the opponent to follow it.
We got all the facts we could on Serra, and then we took a structured, strategic approach to work. Much to everyone’s surprise—given how good Serra was known to be on the ground—I took him down. And I didn’t let him back up until the ref stopped the fight in round two.
In our modern world, psychologists might compare this technique to what they call cognitive therapy. Your brain is like a computer; it’s connected by a bunch of networks that serve various functions. Fear likes to mess with these functions. So after a while, fear can take over the brain’s net
works to trigger fear reactions.
Fear likes to become one of your habits. Like being scared of dogs. Let’s say you were bitten by a dog when you were a kid, so as a result it’s normal to be afraid of dogs. That’s what the brain tells your body every time you see a dog. Do most dogs bite people? No. But you can’t expect your brain to see things that way, because the fear is telling it that dogs bite, which is based on a fact. The problem is that it’s just one fact from one single occasion a long time ago. Fear doesn’t study history or frequency. It cares only for itself.
Over time, you’ll get better at two things: realizing it’s not as bad as it is, and reducing the frequency of this kind of fear.
Don’t worry, you won’t ever run out of fears; you’ll just get better at leveraging their power to make you stronger and better. And when you tell a negative, fearmongering friend to stop it, tell him it’s part of your fear training program. Who knows, maybe you’ll help him or her get better too. Just remember that you may wish to learn to deal with your own fear before you can share your friends’.
MAVEN: In his position, Georges is on the receiving end of all kinds of negative energy. There are insults, threats and taunting, but we just work to turn those into motivational fuel. What Georges is able to do, because he’s patient and thoughtful and strategic, is hold on to those insults and taunts so he can use them later. You won’t see him lose his temper at a press conference or anywhere else; he’ll use other people’s negative energy to fuel his training and workouts. Those workouts are the ones that determine who’s going to win on fight night, because a fight is much longer than five rounds. A fight takes place over many weeks and months.
A lot of people ask me: How many hours does it take to build a GSP? But it’s not like baking a pie. You can’t just gather the basic ingredients and mold them into a world champion. It takes a supreme kind of individual, one who is willingly dedicating his entire life to a greater goal. It takes someone willing to put himself through torturous amount of pain. It’s more like going to space—you have to be ready for so many different eventualities and various kinds of strains and pressures. Not anybody can be an astronaut—there are multitudes of tests before sending someone into space. Well, not anybody can become a mixed martial artist—and certainly not anybody can become a world champion. Almost anybody can be greatly successful. However, most people are not willing to go through the process and [they] simply want the result. It’s having to go through the process that stops people, not their limited potential.
The Way of the Fight Page 15