The Way of the Fight

by Georges St. Pierre

  In most situations, I can’t afford to lose even a fraction of a second. That’s what happens when you become better at something—your margin of error is reduced. The better you get, the less room for error there is. In my sport, a fraction of a second is the difference between someone who is considered fast and someone who is considered slow. Winning and losing. Champion and has-been.

  I used to lift all kinds of weight with and for my legs, but my feet weren’t even an afterthought. My feet were essentially dead. I had no real sensation there. Those days are over. Ever since I started my recovery from knee surgery, I’ve been working on my feet. Why? Well, as the ancient Greeks believed, my soul is in my feet.

  The first time a human being wore shoes was about 10,000 years ago, according to historians, and those were sandals. Considering that man (Homo sapiens) has been walking the earth for, oh, about 200,000 years, it’s safe to say that shoes are a relatively recent invention.

  What it means to me, then, is that humans before the invention of shoes were more closely connected to the earth than we are. Like in so many facets of modern life, we’ve become disconnected from the planet we live on.

  Think about this: there are over 7,200 nerve endings in each of your feet. This means that, if your brain is the computer, it gets information from over 7,200 sources placed on each foot. The kind of critical information that determines where you stand, which direction you must move in, registers what is happening all around you and helps to get you where you want to go.

  Yet every time you wear shoes or sandals, you’re breaking your connection to the ground. You’re losing valuable information, intelligence. Your information circuit is broken and your power potential is completely diminished. This may not be a big deal if you’re sitting at the computer all day, but if you’re interested in any kind of physical activity, it makes a big difference.

  So training with anything other than my bare feet just doesn’t make much sense to me anymore.

  I became increasingly interested in feet ever since I had to rehabilitate my knee and rebuild my core strength. I started studying what Russia’s Olympic coaches and athletes have been practicing and perfecting since the early 1950s, training barefoot and the like. I thought, If I’m going to change how I use and train my feet, I want to know how other people did it before me. If I can learn from their mistakes, I’ll shorten my path to important knowledge.

  There are all kinds of interesting stories related to feet. Greek gods were always portrayed barefoot. In religion—whether it’s Islam, Christianity, Judaism or Buddhism—there are rituals and beliefs that say going barefoot is superior, especially for purification purposes. Art may be the best example of how feet have expressed humanity. In art, demons’ feet are different from ours, they’re hoofed or crooked or turned the wrong way. Angels, meanwhile, are usually in their bare feet . . .

  To many cultures, the foot represents the soul. If you stop and think for a second, this makes a lot of sense—other than the obvious pun. The foot supports the entire body and keeps it standing, keeps you upright.

  The foot means a lot of things, and spiritually it represents the key to all our individuality. Leaving your footprint somewhere represents something about who you are, your chosen path to advance through life, and where you have been. It connects your entire history—one step at a time—to the present. And remember: we’re all moving toward a place that represents who we imagine we want to be in our future. Maybe this is why Buddhists revere what they believe are Buddha’s footprints. They like to imagine where he walked so they can be inspired by his path.

  The elementary truth is that feet are all about posture; they determine how you carry yourself. They play a role, whether you slouch or stand upright with your shoulders rolled back. When people look at you, they may not see your feet, your foundation, but the way you present yourself certainly has an effect on their perception. They say that body language is more than 90 percent of how people interpret others. That’s another reason why feet are so important, and we see the role they play in all kinds of specialized disciplines—whether it’s kung fu, karate, savate, Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, or even chakra meditation, reflexology, Tai Chi and just ordinary walking.

  You might be thinking this is a tad eccentric—in our modern world and after years of wearing padded shoes everywhere for everything, there is something weird about the idea of doing more things in our bare feet. And don’t get me wrong: I’m not planning on walking in downtown Montreal in my bare feet. But we wear padding on our feet because we don’t know how to use them properly anymore. And the dirt . . .

  I said earlier that humans have been around for about 200,000 years, but our predecessors, well, they’ve been here for over four million years. That’s how long it has taken to develop the human foot. And in just a few thousand years, and with one singular object—a shoe—we’ve reversed the progress and changed the form and use of our feet.

  And yet, there’s a lot more to our feet than their history.

  Some people will say, “Georges, it hurts when I run and my heels hit the ground!” That’s because your heels aren’t even supposed to hit the ground when you run—even if you’re wearing a shoe. The whole idea of a heel strike is a mistake. It’s counterproductive.

  The human foot is a fabulous work of engineering. Compared to other living things, our feet are amazing just because of the way the bones and muscles are assembled and the way they’ve evolved over time. Shoes just constrain us and stop us from developing our feet the right way.

  Even though I’ve neglected training my feet, I’ve been pretty lucky in most of my fights. In my stance, my heel almost never touches the ground, except for when I’m resting. For me, this brings my weight onto the balls of my feet, and that’s where I have an advantage over most of my opponents: I’m always ready to explode or change directions.

  Try jumping high. You can’t do that from your heels; you have to do it from the balls of your feet. If you’re well balanced on the balls of your feet, you don’t have to waste time shifting your weight. You go. You save time. A fraction of a second means a lifetime. A lot of other guys stand up straight, especially the Muay Thai fighters. Recognizing this has been very important to me. It has given me an edge.

  So much has changed from the early days of my career until now. When I look back at the first time I fought Matt Hughes, I see a different person—another fighter, really. First of all, I was a major, major underdog. Matt was by far the best fighter in MMA, a true legend in every sense of the word, and someone I looked up to for all kinds of reasons. He was, in my mind and pound for pound, the best fighter in the world.

  I was just a kid, a kid with a title shot against his idol. I had just started training with Firas, and we had almost no resources to prepare for the title fight. Up until that point, I’d been fighting part time because I also had to make money to pay for rent and my car. I had no training partners, few coaches, and at five foot nine and 155 pounds, Firas—my sparring partner—is not a Matt Hughes replica, so my training camp was a bit of a joke.

  In those days, Firas and I would work out at Tristar. It was less than half the size it is now, and my approach was not what anyone would call scientific. No one was giving us a chance to even come close to winning that fight, and to be honest with you, I wasn’t sure myself how I could legitimately win.

  One thing was for sure: if I beat him, it wasn’t going to be easy. Before the fight, I was thinking that maybe I’d get lucky and catch him with a flying knee. Or maybe I’d take a different kind of gamble and score a big shot. Or he’d make a mistake and I’d get lucky. What that really means is that for my first fight against Matt Hughes, there was no real game plan.

  A real training camp today is totally different. We have various fighters playing different roles, partners and coaches who fly in from all over the world to take part in the training camp. Back in the day, nobody wanted to touch me with a ten-foot pole. I was just a nobody, so there was no reason t
o be there. Matt Hughes would destroy me. In the octagon before the fight even started, I couldn’t look Matt Hughes in the eye. He wasn’t just intimidating, I shrank before him.

  MAVEN: To me, Georges is an ant. Everything he does can be compared to ants and how they live, what their existence is about. First of all, Georges is always going somewhere. He always has a place to go. He never stops moving, he never stops doing things that will get him closer to his goal, no matter what. And that’s because he’s part of a greater idea.

  Organizing my preparation is one major reason why Firas is my full-time coach. I’ve known him a long time. Before he was my training partner, I started training with his brother Ahmad, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu ace (now a doctor!), but I knew that he came from good, honest, hardworking and intelligent people. It was very rough at first with Firas. We had some very good fights against each other in training. He has an extremely high level in martial arts and he’s really tough. He’s good in everything—he’s one of the most complete fighters I’ve seen, and yet he’s never even fought professionally, which is interesting. He’s exceptional all around, he’s better than many fighters I’ve faced in the ring too, but he’s more like Pai Mei, the character in the Kill Bill movies by Quentin Tarantino. He’s the master who doesn’t fight, but teaches the Shaolin fighters. That’s what we call him at Tristar: Pai Mei. He has that quality where he always seems to have an answer and can find ways of surprising you and teaching you new things.

  MAVEN: Georges is definitely on a mission, and he keeps proving that he can carry more than his own weight. Like an ant, the only way to stop him would be to kill him. He has no doubt, no hesitation, no confusion, no second-guessing. Obstacles will not deter him from the goal. Not a trunk; not a twig. He’ll always find a way.

  Something Firas and I often discuss is that as time progresses and mixed martial arts becomes more “intelligent,” great martial artists will become smaller, less physically powerful. They’ll rely on muscle much, much less. As time moves forward, our mental and tactical knowledge will grow and grow, and the next generations of fighters will rely much less on physical power and much more on the “art” in martial arts. Some styles of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu are only seventy-five years old. This is very young for a fighting art. My job, and maybe the thing I love the most about what I do, is sharing everything I know with my peers.

  Before my first UFC fight, my team and I were in a sub-basement of the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Vegas, and I was a total nobody. A nobody surrounded by other nobodies, in a cramped space. The rest of the change room was occupied by gigantic early-MMA machines who were screaming and psyching themselves up for their own fights. There were a half dozen guys at least six foot five, 250 pounds each. Rico Rodriguez, Wes Sims, Kevin Randleman, Bill Goldberg, Mark Coleman, their own teams, my two guys, and me, in the equivalent of a small kitchen. Some party.

  A bunch of oversized killers, screaming and egging each other on. I was wide-eyed and freaking out. Mark Coleman was the Pride Fighting champion and I was thinking, Wow, Coleman is in my changing room. We thought he and his entourage would be the consummate professionals. While I warmed up in a toilet stall—doing jumping jacks in front of a toilet bowl because it was the only space left for me—they pumped up by shouting.

  “YEAHHH THAT’S WHAT YOU DO FOR A LIVING, BUST PEOPLE UP! YEAH!!!”

  As I was finishing my toilet-stall jumping jacks, the legendary Burt Watson kicked the locker room door in and screamed as loud as he could: “ST-PIERRE! YOU’RE UP NEXT!” I didn’t know what was happening. This was my first rumble, and I’d never been to this planet before.

  I entered the ring, put my fists up and won by TKO. When I came back to the changing room, Coleman and Kevin Randleman picked me up and tossed me in the air, about six inches from the ceiling. Then they started hugging me, and then the other guys slapped me on the back and I almost went down, face-first. It felt good. Scary, but good.

  My team and I decided to go out and watch Wes Sims fight, see how his guys cornered him—see how the professionals did it.

  It was a mess. Nothing was organized or seemed ready. They even forgot to bring out his mouthpiece and had to go back while everyone waited. Then, when Wes was in the ring, his corner would just keep screaming the same three things over and over again: “BLAST HIM, SQUEEZE HIM, KILL HIM.” And these were, at the time, the best MMA guys on the planet. Coleman was the Pride Grand Prix champion. The King.

  And then lightning struck: Sims got beat. Rodolphe and I looked at each other and we rushed back to the locker room to get our stuff before they had the chance to get back in. I mean, before his fight, Sims’s guys were punching the walls and going nuts, so I couldn’t imagine what it would be like after the loss. We gathered all our stuff and got out as quickly as possible.

  I saw Coleman later that night, staring at a table, his chin in the palm of his hand. He was losing it, whispering to himself, “I’m okay, I’m okay, I’ll be okay,” and then he’d start screaming, “I’M SO FUCKING MAD! HE SHOULD HAVE BEAT HIM!” He’d pound the table with his formidable fist and then he’d lower the volume again. “I’m not mad I’m not mad, he’s young, he’ll learn from it, it is what is, BUT JESUS HE COULD HAVE DONE BETTER I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE IT, but I’m not mad I’m not mad.”

  Even so, every time we return to the Mandalay Bay in Vegas, we find that dressing room and remember what that day was like. We can only laugh. We thought we were going to the big show—that it was going to be ultra-professional . . .

  As it happens, I saw something else that day: Wes Sims, a six-foot-eight giant who had some pretty serious rivals, defeated mentally and tactically. I saw size, in many ways, as a detriment.

  What you realize at a certain point is that physical strength has limits. It’s a technological truth. Take a car jack, for instance. If you want to build a better jack, you can, and it will be stronger. But will it help you fix your car better? I don’t think so. Once your car is off the ground twelve inches, the car jack’s use is fully exploited. Intelligence at some point must prevail and take over from physical strength.

  Humanity’s true purpose is not to become stronger physically, it’s to become more intelligent—from armies, who increasingly fight with specialized units rather than regiments and tanks, to garage owners, who use a lot more than jacks to fix your engine. As intelligence prevails throughout humanity, maybe there’ll be fewer wars and better cars.

  MAVEN: Think about it, and remember that we all play with ants when we are kids. They’re everywhere. They thrive in almost any ecosystem, they can modify almost any habitat and adjust it to their ultimate goal, they can tap into any resources they can find, and they can definitely defend themselves. All those things remind me of Georges in some way.

  Right before my first fight against Matt Hughes, after the weigh-in, Firas asked me if I was afraid of him. I lied. I said, “Fuck, no, I’m not scared.” But he looked into my eyes and saw something different. He sensed it. And I paid for it later. I didn’t fight the way I wanted to. The way I knew how to fight. The way I should have fought.

  The next time I faced Hughes, Firas told me, right before we went into the octagon, to make sure I looked straight into his eyes, no blinking, no wavering. He knew that, from the first time around, Hughes had probably seen my fear too, and that I couldn’t afford to give him that edge a second time. Because of those few seconds, everything changed for me. And they probably changed for my opponent too.

  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 fr
om 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.

  This doesn’t mean my friends should bullshit me about how great everything is, but the key is looking at problems as opportunities to find new solutions. This is where we learn how to invent life—by removing the BS, looking at the plain facts hard and directly, and then moving forward.

  MAVEN: Ants have three major qualities that connect directly to Georges and the way he goes about life. 1) They’re industrious: they constantly find new ways of doing things related to their greater goal.