The Way of the Fight

With light comes movement. Before the alarm has an opportunity to scream, my eyes open, searching aimlessly before my mind awakes. The first thoughts inside my head are that day’s training. Where I must go, what time I must be there, with whom I’ll be training, my goals for the day. Life is a program now, a schedule, a balancing act etched into my brain. The written schedule I used to refer to is redundant now. I don’t even know where it is. (Location 60)

Ever since I was nine years old I’ve known the unique feeling generated by fear. It makes me laugh now, but that’s because I know better. It’s because, without the bullies and the assholes and the jerks, I would never have become who I am today. I would never have been lucky enough to prove them wrong. I would be somebody different, and nobody can know who that person would or might have been. I just don’t care about the possibilities because I can’t change any of the things that have come before me. All I know for certain is the present. (Location 211)

adrenaline and turning it into power I save for the octagon. That’s where the real secret lies: learning how to use the power of fear. But the solution really does lie with the beholder. If a person is unsure about who he is and what his life goals are, the fear takes over his body and does what it wants with it. Fear freezes your actions because it takes (Location 683)

Very often, we see leaders lose sight of how they got to where they are: by being and thinking differently from the competition. They make it to first place, and then their thinking changes from seeking innovation to seeking the status quo. They think, I made it to first place, so now I must not change a thing. But change is what got them to the top in the first place! This is because they’re focused on the positive result rather than on the process of success. (Location 793)

One of the lessons I learned in all those years of practicing karate is that progress only comes in small, incremental portions. Nobody becomes great overnight. Nobody crams information if he wants to be able to use it over the long term. Confucius said: “Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I’ll remember. Involve me and I’ll understand.” I love that quote, and I’m lucky to have had teachers throughout my career who understood new ways of involving me in learning. (Location 920)

Genetics and athleticism can be a blessing, but for some they can be a curse. If you’re physically so gifted that you don’t need a lot of effort to be the best when you’re young, you can lose out on learning the tough lessons that the little brothers and sisters learn. If it’s always easy, it’s hard to believe that one day it’s going to get harder. Young people at some point need to be tested, because their reaction will determine their path. So genetics is good to those who combine it with a mental outlook aimed at understanding the growth potential in struggle, defeat and hunger. (Location 1030)

My journalist friend was telling me that the Rocket used to spend a lot of time alone on the ice at the Montreal Forum, practicing his shot. One day, a television crew came to film him, and they asked him, “Rocket, what’s the secret for scoring all those goals?” Rocket stopped what he was doing and looked at them, and then he said, “I shoot the puck at the net.” Then he got the bucket of pucks out and started shooting pucks at the net. They all went in. That was his great secret. (Location 1077)

I’m fortunate to have a memory geared to my chosen profession. I can remember every single important detail of a fight and I can replay each moment in my head. My mind has always been like that. And then there are things my body does that are inexplicable but to me are second nature. (Location 1271)

MASTER: If I asked you to run through a brick wall, it would be hard work, not smart work. It wouldn’t make you better. Hard work doesn’t necessarily garner results, and hard, stupid work gives you negative results. As the great Benjamin Franklin once said, “Never mistake movement for action.” (Location 1305)

MASTER: And the study of gymnastics has brought Georges to a level of athleticism that is better than at any other point in his career.         He was never just satisfied with hard work. Bodybuilding is hard work—you lift those weights and you feel exhausted—but it’s not smart work. It’s not going to make you a better athlete or a better mixed martial artist. And so Georges didn’t just stay with the hard work; over a decade, he has constantly refined and rejected, moved on, rejected and moved on—until he found the apex of athleticism, which he believes is gymnastics. This is just one example where you see Georges working hard with a sense of vision. (Location 1336)

MASTER: Too many people in mixed martial arts talk about hard work without intelligent hard work. It’s the depth of insight that matters. What gives work an intelligent direction is what makes it useful. Georges is restless in his desire to find the most efficient use of that hard work. He’s constantly looking for ways of improving his workout, constantly looking for new ways of applying rules to increase their efficiency rate. That is what makes him unique: his depth of insight and vision. Not just athletic ability and work ethic. (Location 1351)

Anyone who concretely visualizes a realistic and more immediate goal when planning for long-term success has a vastly better chance at change and achievement. When we realize the smaller successes, when the stepping stones are reached and become our new platform, we feel good about ourselves. We feel energized, like things are working right and we’re making them happen. Eventually, this pushes us on to greater visions, greater goals, greater ambition. There is nothing more satisfying and more personally empowering than realizing a goal. This just puts a smile on my face. (Location 1398)

There are techniques for punches and kicks, but in my opinion they are only the beginning. Everybody is different, so the key isn’t to force yourself to do the kick the way everybody else does it. The secret is in repeating the kick—or the punch—the best way you’re able to do it, and then repeating it thousands of times. In the gym, in your own mind, at all times. (Location 1417)

There’s an entire collection of mirages waiting for you when you become a world champion for the first time. Obviously, you wake up the day after winning and you have only friends left in the world. Everybody likes you (except maybe the guy you beat last night) and wants to help. Everybody wants to be there and play a role and give you tips, et cetera. And if you believe all of them (including the voice inside your head that reminds you how great you are), you start believing that you don’t need to train as hard anymore, that you’ve earned the right to party and be cool, that you can get away with taking it easy and not preparing as much for the next fight. As champion, I had everyone around me—in the gym, on the street, in interviews, wherever—telling me I was the best, I was so great, I was this, I was that. The impact was not good because it only catered to my ego, which created an imaginary place. I put myself inside this beautiful, imaginary place where I was separated from all the other fighters by a line—a line that nobody else could cross. It was my place alone. But all of this just created a big illusion. Illusions are temporary. You’re the same person after you become world champion as you were before you were world champion. Even the belt, other than looking good on the wall, has no uses. It doesn’t even hold up your pants. (Location 1727)

Whether or not I had ever met Georges St-Pierre, my life would be unchanged: I wake up, I teach Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu all day, and I come home at night. Certain aspects of my knowledge base would be deficient, but the living of my daily life would be the same. I have a belief that all human greatness is founded upon routine, that truly great human behavior is impossible without this central part of your life being set up and governed by routine. All greatness comes out of an investment in time and the perfection of skills that render you great. And so, show me almost any truly great person in the world who exhibits some kind of extraordinary skills, and I’ll show you a person whose life is governed largely by routine. (Location 1748)

On the face of it, Georges shouldn’t be a successful person at all. He was never an outstanding student in school. At the time I met him, he was working odd jobs and didn’t really seem to have much going for him. And yet now he’s a recognized guy with millions of fans and is by all accounts extremely successful. This is largely because he had a tremendous sense of vision, he had an extremely clear idea of what he wanted to do and where he wanted to do it. (Location 1802)

Many people have a good idea of what they want to do in their lives, but they lack the discipline and the patience to work their way there. What anyone, regardless of whether or not they’re interested in martial arts, can take away from the story of GSP is the power of the marriage of vision with discipline. (Location 1805)

In between my Hughes fights, my fear delivered one of the great lessons of my life: that someone without fear can’t push himself. He can’t get better. He can’t transform negatives into positives. He can’t open his world to creativity and invention, or progress. “He’s not that good.” That was all I read. All I heard. All else was deleted. That stuff gets to you. I started doubting myself, wondering if they were right about me. It took me a long time. Until Matt Hughes, I had no confidence. It took me two fights to recover from the mental doubt. But then I really beat Hughes and I felt solid as a rock. As a mountain. So the question is: What happens when you accept and embrace your fear? Fear becomes your weapon. Some people are totally incapable of seeing fear as an opportunity to get better at something. To develop the best version of themselves. Some people wallow in their fears and try to suck their friends into the pit with them. I don’t really like hanging out with these people because they suck all the good energy out of me. Instead of seeing fear as an opportunity, they use words like problem or crisis. They’re always talking about bad stuff they’re “going through” and how hard it is to just get by. I don’t see the use in this kind of mental discouragement. There are so many people out there who want to bring others down, that I don’t need “friends” to make it worse. I want my friends to help me look at possibility. (Location 2201)

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 (Location 2302)

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. (Location 2337)

A specialist can be as dangerous as an all-around guy, and more so on some occasions because specialists are gifted. It’s in the name—they’re special. So a specialist is someone with an extreme gift—speed, power, reach, impulse, explosiveness—who turns it into a unique weapon. And then there is the generalist, which is what my whole system is based on. Firas often says, “The king of all styles is the antagonist.” By antagonist, he means generalist, someone who causes trouble from any of the fighting stances. The reason is simple: when you’re a generalist, you try to provoke your opponent so he gets out of his comfort zone, away from his specialty. I always aim to antagonize my opponent and dictate the rhythm of the fight, and where it will take place inside the octagon. So for a generalist, if you fight a wrestler, you have to box him. If you face a boxer, you have to wrestle him. This is the main premise to my system: whatever my opponent does best, I will try to take him to the other realm. I will try to take him out of his comfort zone and into mine, which can be any of the three ways of fighting. That’s what I did against Hughes in the two follow-up fights. I kept him away from his strength. (Location 2394)

I have to make my training harder and more challenging than my next fight. The reason, quite simply, is to create extreme conditions to ensure that I’m ready for anything. So training with winners, with guys who are better than me at specific elements of martial arts, will make me a better all-around fighter. It will make me more rounded. I figured out a long time ago that I would never become the best at a single thing. I couldn’t be the fastest guy, or the strongest, or the most agile. But I discovered and understood how I could probably become the best all-around fighter and athlete, so I focused on that. I focused on my strengths. (Location 2413)

So I spend most of my time training with people who are better than me. Especially when I’m preparing for a fight. If my next opponent is an excellent wrestler, for example, I’ll spend a great deal of time practicing with wrestling experts who are better at it than I am. I’ll go to my Montreal wrestling coach Victor’s gym to face the best there is. Or if I’m up against a left-handed fighter who’s got a great left hook, I’ll spend many hours in the ring facing left-handers who pack a lot of power in their punch. (Location 2417)

Georges’s trainability is amazing. It is where he becomes unique, incomparable to any other fighter or athlete. It’s not about any one kind of mentality at this stage. The key is just being completely open-minded and immersed in learning, no matter the learning. With Georges, it’s never about liking or not liking a certain kind of training—it can’t be. And that’s the difference maker. Most people do what they like to do, and they avoid doing what they need to do. Mastering all forms of the fighting sciences is exceptionally difficult. Sometimes, it’s really unpleasant. It requires dedication and confidence, and a person who can absorb all the extra information. That’s Georges. He takes it all in, processes it and keeps the valuable information so he can use it anytime. The (Location 2431)

reality is that you don’t get to take that many breaks when you’re part of a great goal, and people need breaks from stuff, from life. Georges, though, he does it when he has to do it, not just when he feels like doing it. (Location 2437)

time, guaranteed. A big part of my training is to create conditions that make survival almost impossible, but I also want to ensure to build balance by creating conditions that make my success entirely possible. I want to make sure that my body and my brain get used to doing things right and feel every movement to its fullest. Think about it for a second, as if you’re a baseball player. When a baseball player takes batting practice, he’s not up there to strike out. The person throwing balls at home plate isn’t trying to fool the hitter: he’s trying to make the hitter feel powerful. He’s trying to get the hitter to understand how to hit the ball out of the park, or safely for a base hit, with his eyes and, physically, with his whole body. The same is true for all sports—shooting open three-pointers, throwing the ball to wide-open receivers, et cetera. Good training and preparation aren’t about creating losing conditions, they’re also about creating winning conditions. So at specific times during my fight preparation, my team goes out to the Gracie Barra dojo in Montreal with Bruno Fernandes, and I get to fight with a few blue belts. First of all, this is very good for me because it allows me to practice my attacks. I have someone in front of me whom I know I can take down quickly. So I do, and I get used to the feeling of being the aggressor. My body and mind interact and understand how to execute the movement freely, comfortably and, hopefully, to perfection. What this means, contextually, is that I get to focus on success. I get “easy” wins in practice, and that makes me feel good. It sounds clichéed, but I’m now truly understanding that training is like life in that it can’t always be hard, because then it stops being fun. With success comes timing and technique. I can repeat certain moves over and over again until they’re perfect, against a willing opponent who knows just enough to make it challenging with...

...out being too hard. Succinctly put: training with lesser fighters lets me work on my timing. (Location 2581)

After his big fight in Toronto, in front of the biggest live audience ever to watch a UFC championship, after he had beaten the only opponent the public felt could beat him, Georges gave me his belt. We were in the octagon right after the fight, celebrating. They put the belt around his waist and he turned around and he whispered in my ear, “This one’s for you.” That was the biggest venue in UFC history, his crowning moment in history, and he wasn’t thinking about himself. He hadn’t been wearing the belt for more than five seconds—no more than five!—and he gave it away. This belt represents everything he’s worked for, and then he turns around and gives it away. I can’t tell you how touched I was. What an incredible thing to do. I can’t say that I truly understand the gesture. I was perplexed that that’s what was on his mind after his fight. Knowing yourself (Location 2613)