Issue 093

October 2012

When I tore my anterior cruciate ligament last year to put me out of my fight with Nick Diaz, I was devastated. Not only that I couldn’t fight, but I knew I had to take six months off, completely, from training. And another nine months off before I could come back and compete again. I was devastated.

Georges St Pierre

UFC welterweight champion, 22-2

What happened was, I hurt my left knee, but it wasn’t a very bad injury so I kept training on it. I tried to hide it; I tried to deny it because I really wanted to fight. And by doing so I was compensating and then I hurt my right leg. It was a mistake. I should have just canceled the fight in the beginning. But I didn’t do it because I tried to fight on it and because I wanted to fight.

Just like I had to, there have been a lot of guys who have pulled out of fights recently: Michael Bisping, José Aldo, Vitor Belfort. The thing is, we have a fight, we have to train hard and it is what it is. The reality is we need to train intensely, and, normally, the training is harder than the fight. What I mean is, it’s not harder in one training session, but because it’s longer; training camp is sometimes up to eight weeks. It’s hard and it’s long and we don’t recuperate as much and getting injured is the repercussion. It makes a big difference.

But that’s why it keeps happening, and we need to be aware of it and be careful with the way we train. I switched my old training regimen because of that and it’s going to make me more efficient, and it’s also going to make me a better fighter with a longer career.

I’m not going to lift weights anymore. Lifting weights will wear on your joints and create a lot of impact – on top of the impact us fighters already have with our martial arts training. I’m also going to use my conditioning training – or what I call conditioning, which is training that I do outside of fighting – like gymnastics and track running. I’m going to use it as therapeutic training, not as performance training. And even though, one day, I’m not going to fight anymore, I’m always going to train as part of my lifestyle. I really enjoy doing it. I’ve been doing it since I was seven years old. I’ve been doing this even way before I started my career, so I’m going to do it as long as I can.

People have suggested the UFC’s health insurance for fighters is why guys pull out. The thing is, when you’re about to fight, if you have an injury, competing is going to make the injury worse. So it depends what kind of injury you have as to why you might cancel. You can have a little bruise and stuff like that, but it depends on the nature of the injury, the gravity of it. For sure, sometimes you go into a fight and your training camp has been hard so your body is a little bit messed up – that’s OK. But not if you have a really bad injury like a torn ACL. You can’t fight with that.

What’s the worst I’ve ever been injured and still fought? I’ve been hurt before a bout but I’ve never been hurt-hurt and fought. What I mean by that is, I’ve never fought with a bad injury. I remember early in my career, I took a fight against Thomas Denny in Montreal in 2003 at UCC 12 – a little while after that event the promotion changed its name to TKO. I was sick the day of the fight but I took it and I won. I was sick, it was very bad. And it was a tough fight but thank God I won; it was a second-round stoppage. Aside from that, I’ve taken fights where I had a tweak or something, or this and that, but never a proper injury.

I believe the main reason for all these injuries recently could be the overtraining. In my case that’s what it was. I was completely burned out, tired. I didn’t have as much fun as I used to have in the beginning and I realized the whole key to training, the key to this whole thing, is to have fun. So I’m going to come back stronger and have fun, and I’m going to do what I do best.