Coaches and athletes – The case of Georges St-Pierre: An interesting part of the story behind any great athlete is the influence of various teachers and coaches upon his and her development. A feature of Mr St-Pierre is that he had a long time affiliation with highly specialized coaches. He had specialist boxing coaches, culminating in freddie roach, specialist Muay Thai/kick boxing coaches, of whom firas zahabi was foremost, specialist wrestling coaches, mostly from the Montreal Wrestling club (the importance of Montreal Wrestling club, particularly Victor Zilberman and Gia Sissaouri, in Mr St-Pierre's development has never been sufficiently acknowledged in the MMA press – they were a tremendous resource throughout his career). I was the ground/jiu jitsu specialist. However, THE REAL KEY TO MR ST-PIERRE'S SUCCESS IN MMA WAS NOT IN ANY ONE ASPECT OF THE SPORT, BUT RATHER IN THE INTERFACES BETWEEN EACH SKILL AREA SO THAT HE WAS MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE, THE KING OF UNIFYING DISPARATE SKILLS INTO A SEAMLESS WHOLE. No one coach taught him this – his coaches were specialists – but he was the quintessential all rounder. The only logical conclusion is that Mr St-Pierre is personally responsible for the majority of his development in the area that bought him his success. He was not a passive learner – BUT AN INNOVATIVE self RELIANT INTEGRATOR. Whatever assistance myself and others may have offered, the primary credit must go to Mr St-Pierre himself. Watching his adaption of our specialized knowledge into his own integrated art has been a privilege
