Reflections on my students – The master of distance – Georges St-Pierre: More than any other athlete I worked with, Georges St-Pierre was a master of the subtleties of controlling and exploiting the distance between himself and his opponent. This mastery of distance management is an absolutely critical part of mma. In the vast majority of professional fights, more time is spent in this part of the game than any other. When people talk about the development of Mr St-Pierre's game, they often make reference to his many coaches and the influence these people had on him. Interestingly, the whole skill of distance control and covering distance to the takedown, WAS A SKILL THAT MR ST-PIERRE MOSTLY TAUGHT HIMSELF. As a teenager under the sometimes unorthodox tutelage of Kristof Midoux, Mr St-Pierre was constantly put in sparring situations where he had to box his way to a takedown on much older, more experienced opponents. As time passed, trial and error, experimentation and eclecticism in drawing in disparate skills from various combat arts produced an uncanny ability to strike into takedowns. Sometimes during fight camp after dinner or during some free time Mr St-Pierre will ask me to take a fighting stance and he will practice his repertoire of feints, deceptions and misdirections that enable him to get to his opponents legs for the takedown. I have done this with him for well over a decade. Yet to this day, he invariably misdirects me and easily gets to my legs – leaving me feeling like a fool as once again I am deceived by the same tricks Thus was born this great athletes best weapon – he had many influences – but his primary weapon, the one which more than any other was the source of his success, was his own invention. It was a peculiar blend of his early days in sport karate, his wrestling training, fencing tactics and most of all, his adaptation to the demands of takedown sparring in his early years. Here he works with MMA standout David Branch on the theory of distance, both men are about to return to the UFC later in the year where once again they will be able to show the importance of this critical skill
