Founding member of the squad: Mr Georges St-Pierre returned to the basement of wisdom through pain for some some fine training sessions with the youngsters. The majority of my time training with Mr St-Pierre was in developing grapple boxing skills for professional MMA fighting – very different from pure submission grappling. When he retired, he was able to have fun working on submission grappling skills and has made impressive progress Here the squad watches as he works his ashi garami drills with partner Garry Tonon. We use these drills to develop deeper mechanical knowledge of the position so that we increase the chances of success under the pressure of live combat, whether in the gym or in competition (shiai). Often I have the students teach the move back to the class to ensure they have a solid understanding of the core concepts and principles that underly its use. A huge part of Mr St-Pierre's success came from his willingness to always keep training and learning over his entire career and beyond with specialists in a given domain, so that he could add those skills and use them in the broader domain of MMA. Even in pure submission grappling he is one of the toughest training partners for the squad when they prepare for shiai – remarkable, given that this is not his primary focus.
