The Way of the Fight

by Georges St-Pierre

As Aristotle wrote a long, long time ago, and I’m paraphrasing here, the goal is to avoid mediocrity by being prepared to try something and either failing miserably or triumphing grandly. Mediocrity is not about failing, and it’s the opposite of doing. Mediocrity, in other words, is about not trying. The reason is achingly simple, and I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

pick a goal, make a realistic plan to reach that goal, work through each step of the plan, and repeat.

basically arete is about looking into your own soul and not only discovering what it is that can make you great, but also identifying the source of that greatness and activating it every single day of your life. It’s the well you draw from when there’s no other resource. It’s the absolute truth that sits in the deepest part of your soul.

“L’homme libre est celui qui sait rêver, qui sait inventer sa propre vie.” The free man knows how to dream and how to invent his own life. The philosopher Martin Gray said that. The first part of Gray’s quote I interpret as looking within yourself and imagining the greatest things you’ll ever do. The second part of the quote—knowing how to invent life—I interpret as the practical side of the equation. It’s about the plan you must develop to make the dream possible. It’s the preparation and work that have to be done to make it come true. Because dreams don’t get made overnight. I started karate when I was seven years old. It took almost two decades of constant practice and dedication to get a shot at the title. Twenty years! And to be perfectly honest with you, most of that time I had no real idea exactly where I was going. At first, I thought I was going to be a wrestler, like Hulk Hogan. “One day, when you were nine, I found you watching wrestling on television,” my mother recalls. “You turned to me and said: ‘One day there’ll be a bonhomme Georges (a Georges figurine).’ It really freaks me out when I think of that.”

Fear is the genesis of most of the good things that have occurred in my life. Fear is the beginning of every success I’ve lived.

“Fall down seven times, stand up eight.”

And the only way to ascend to new and greater heights is to lose. I have a special relationship with losing. It scares me to death, but that doesn’t mean I can’t find a way of using it to my benefit. Because losing changes me and turns me into a better man.

Many people wonder why I’m so interested in dinosaurs and their history. The reason is actually really simple: dinosaurs were the biggest, most physically powerful creatures that ever walked the face of the earth, yet now they’re gone.

The cockroach is one giant nerve, fine-tuned to everything around it: the environment and all immediate sources of potential danger. It’s adaptable to almost any situation it encounters, and that’s what makes the cockroach so interesting. It’s a mobile radar system designed to identify and avoid threats.

Dinosaurs were huge and powerful; they could not adapt and they died out. And so the big difference between dinosaurs and cockroaches is adaptability: one is able to adjust, while the other, apparently, couldn’t. Dinosaurs didn’t make adjustments, either because they didn’t feel they needed to, or couldn’t understand that they needed to. They were slowly but surely dying out as food became scarce and their environment changed around them—be it temperature or the arrival of mammals.

I’ve never been the biggest guy in the octagon, and I don’t ever want to be either. My goal is to be the most efficient, quickest-thinking fighter. I aim to be flexible, open-minded and ready for any situation. And so, I may love the dinosaurs and their stories, but I’m inspired by the cockroach: the ultimate adapter and the greatest survivor.

He turned this seemingly small episode into an eternal truth: always finish what you’ve started.

The result is that, after a while, you get practice at being courageous. You understand how to move forward against fear, how to react in certain situations. You just get better. It doesn’t mean you stop feeling fear—that would be careless—but it means you have earned the right to feel confidence in the battle against fear.

MENTOR: When he came back after our first meeting, I saw immediately that there was something to do with this kid. That’s why I couldn’t leave him behind. I told him that if he’d stay disciplined and come regularly to train, I’d help him out. I saw from the very first day that he loved training, he lived and fed off of it, and nothing would tire him. Nothing. That’s also why I wanted to help him. I did everything I could to exhaust him, to make him fall from fatigue, to break his will and his resolve, but he just kept coming back to me. He kept coming for more, day after day. It was like a battle between us in many ways to see who could outlast the other. Every time he came to train—he’d go two solid hours, take a little ten-minute break and then start going again—I saw more and more potential.

Georges is first and foremost a theorist. This is why I believe that one day he’ll be a great teacher. It’s also why I was able to put him in situations that everyone else would have failed in. He has a superior intellect, especially when it comes to the martial arts. So I designed lessons made for him.

The thing I had to learn, and I keep learning this lesson in my life every day, is how to take the fear’s power and use it to become better. But fear is smart, and many times it’s smarter than you and it makes you do stupid, irrational things, or it makes you forget simple things—like where you were standing the moment your life changed in major way. Because changes do happen from moment to moment.

The key, I discovered, is to understand fear and how it works. What I want to do is demystify fear. I don’t have a choice, because fear walks next to you everywhere in life. It has a reason for being there. People feel fear because they sense a threat. Sometimes it comes from physical pain: something unseen falls on your head, it hurts, and you’re immediately scared. That’s normal, and what the fear is doing is telling you to be careful, to get out of the way because it doesn’t want something else to fall on your head. So fear’s purpose is ultimately good—that’s what people forget. Fear is designed to bring you to a safe place. In this case it’s telling you to get the hell out of the way. Simple human logic.

Once fear enters your life—whether it’s been there for a second or a lifetime makes no difference—it will take you in one of two directions: empowerment or panic. That’s where the expression “like a deer in headlights” comes from. The deer is panicking and the panic—the extreme expression of fear—makes him stand there, unable to act. This marks the end of the deer, usually, and it’s not a happy end. Don’t be a deer. Dumb deer die a depressing death.

Fear freezes your actions because it takes you into the world of what-if, and that’s the worst place anybody can be. This is when you start doing stupid things like predicting the future, or thinking your career as a mixed martial arts world champion is going to end suddenly. Forecasting doom and gloom is not only useless, but detrimental. It’s giving away all your power to fear and letting it take over your life. The consequences stink. Once you start doubting yourself, you’re vulnerable. That’s when critics’ words start to influence your thoughts. Maybe he can knock me out, you think. Maybe I’m not that strong. Maybe he will catch me and put me down. Someone says about you, “He doesn’t have a chin,” and you think it’s true. It gets inside your head, like a smell you can’t scrub away. Maybe I don’t have a chin for real.

If you look at fear from an emotional perspective, it will drag you down into panic. But if you can look at it objectively, analytically, only then can you make it work for you. When you master this, you open new avenues to generate power and knowledge. You discover new ways of thinking. You learn that fear can be a natural ally, a homemade power source.

Zen Buddhists, when they meditate, have a way of always staying connected to the present, no matter where their thoughts take them. They ring what’s called a mindfulness bell. So they sit and breathe and meditate and, when the bell rings, they open their eyes and reconnect with where they are so that they stay attached to the present. They are thankful for being there, and often you’ll see them smile while they meditate. I like that.

I think that the Buddhists have a great approach to their lives: they sit and reflect and try to always stay connected to the present. This is how they learn to accept what the world has to offer, no matter the situation. This is how they achieve happiness—by never aiming for it directly.

Standing still is never a good option.

Another great reason to change training systems or approaches is to avoid boredom. Change is a great motivator, which is where all good training starts. When I get stuck doing the same things over and over again, I need something new or I start developing mental fatigue. I need to feel I’m constantly getting better.

All of my innovations are absolutely efficiency based. I take the risk of innovating, of building upon a winning formula to avoid becoming stale or complacent and, above all, to rise to the ever-changing challenge before me. If change is constant in the world, it must be for all individuals too.

So what happens in life is that, as you grow and improve in whatever field you choose, so does the size of your challenges. So grows the size of the problems you can face and solve.

One of the lessons I learned in all those years of practicing karate is that progress only comes in small, incremental portions. Nobody becomes great overnight. Nobody crams information if he wants to be able to use it over the long term.

Confucius said: “Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I’ll remember. Involve me and I’ll understand.” I love that quote,

This is incredibly important because a great physical journey is only possible if your mentality is nourished with positive energy. It’s going to feel good to reach that first plateau, and what happens is that the second plateau is even easier to reach, and more gratifying. Performance improves. Results are tangible. Your mind and your body feel better and are finally working in harmony. In other words, when you prepare a list of improvements and you make them small and achievable, you won’t just stick to them, you’ll increase the chances that you’ll keep going forward.

named Yamamoto Tsunetomo. In his classic samurai manifesto Hagakure, he writes: “Matters of great concern should be treated lightly. Matters of small concern should be treated seriously.” In other words, when you pay attention to detail, the big picture will take care of itself. The way I see it, details are everywhere and in everything people say. Ninety-nine opinions are one better than ninety-eight—but only if you’re listening to everything people express.

So the geometrists can discuss triangles and Pythagoras and his theorem all they want, but please never forget that a big part of it is really simple. It’s a straight line and it’s right in front of your eyes, so just follow it.

Another fighter who reads this story will see himself and the one time he got up and decided he was too tired or too sore to train. The money’s in the bank. It can get done tomorrow. One day off won’t hurt. Whatever the excuse is, it exists. But not for Georges.

If you can squat a ton and bench-press five hundred pounds and you don’t believe me, go running across an ice rink. Try to reach full speed, and then try to stop. You can’t. You can’t, but your amazing strength is still there. What is it doing for you? Nothing. The ice doesn’t let you generate any force. Balance, on the other hand, equals stability. Stability, in this case, is about getting a grip. So get a grip first.

Fluidity made Bruce Lee who he is, and had a huge impact on my development too. It shows the human and philosophical side of the ultimate martial artist. Here’s something he said about being fluid: Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it into a teacup, it becomes the teacup. That water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

In other words, water constantly changes shape and consistency, it’s essential to survival and it chooses its own shape. Life is like that too. To control it, you have to master it and learn the source of its power and the nature of its course.

And the study of gymnastics has brought Georges to a level of athleticism that is better than at any other point in his career. He was never just satisfied with hard work. Bodybuilding is hard work—you lift those weights and you feel exhausted—but it’s not smart work. It’s not going to make you a better athlete or a better mixed martial artist. And so Georges didn’t just stay with the hard work; over a decade, he has constantly refined and rejected, moved on, rejected and moved on—until he found the apex of athleticism, which he believes is gymnastics. This is just one example where you see Georges working hard with a sense of vision.

Before each one of my fights, I make a point of saluting my opponent. I salute the other fighter out of respect, even though he is trying to take something away from me. Not many people understand why I do this, but it’s simple: without the other guy, there is no me. That’s why I pray for the both of us, and not just myself. By stepping into the octagon, my adversary completes me. He makes my life possible. He becomes a part of my existence. To disrespect him is to disrespect myself. Thanks to him, I become a better man. Thanks to his presence, I am a true martial artist. Thanks to his willingness to face me, my life takes shape and moves forward, my path evolves and my life goal nears.

But then there is a time to let go. There is a moment when you look at your opponent, and you must see yourself. Only then will you understand the words of one of my favorite quotes, which comes from St. Augustine: “Conquer yourself, and the world lies at your feet.”

At any given time, in life or in battle, you only need to know two people to succeed: yourself and your opponent.

Don’t forget, you must first master the rules before you start breaking any of them.

Whether or not I had ever met Georges St-Pierre, my life would be unchanged: I wake up, I teach Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu all day, and I come home at night. Certain aspects of my knowledge base would be deficient, but the living of my daily life would be the same. I have a belief that all human greatness is founded upon routine, that truly great human behavior is impossible without this central part of your life being set up and governed by routine. All greatness comes out of an investment in time and the perfection of skills that render you great. And so, show me almost any truly great person in the world who exhibits some kind of extraordinary skills, and I’ll show you a person whose life is governed largely by routine.

What anyone, regardless of whether or not they’re interested in martial arts, can take away from the story of GSP is the power of the marriage of vision with discipline. The combination of those two can yield tremendous results. The secret is routine.

I believe that our greatest victories in life are hidden behind our biggest losses.

I also often see little brothers and little sisters do well because they spent years having to (and badly wanting to) catch up to their older siblings and their friends. When you’re someone’s younger sibling, you often find yourself chasing after their dreams, being picked last, playing against older, stronger kids—all of which is good for you in the long run. From a young age, little brothers and sisters start at a disadvantage: they have to improve and constantly chase others, and they understand immediately what motivation means. All that because they seek acceptance. They must.

“Genius is one-tenth inspiration and nine-tenths perspiration.”

MASTER: Even then, in his broken English, he talked to me about becoming UFC champion. He was clear as day. He literally, when he looked in the mirror, saw a future champion. He had the will and the patience to give himself time to do what it takes. That’s not an empty dream.

Another integral ingredient to being a champion is belief. But you need two kinds of belief. You need belief that you can make it, so you carry confidence with you everywhere you go. And you need disbelief and disbelievers, people who don’t think you can make it. Those people are incredibly important because they’re the ones who inspire you to do the work, even when you don’t feel like

I proved him wrong and I kept going. Nobody believed me at first. Nobody but me, in fact, and even I had doubts. I was scared of being wrong. Then I met Kristof and others who taught me that it’s all about inventing life. It’s about taking your strengths and doing something with them. It’s using your tools the right way. If I give you three lines and ask you to make a triangle, it’s impossible to make a square. I had some genetic predispositions, but John Danaher will tell you that he’s seen better athletes. From my childhood skirmishes, I carried some rage that fired me up before my earliest fights, but what I acquired early on was the work ethic, discipline and good sense to listen to those who knew more than me.

Show me a hundred people and I’ll show you ninety-nine with an empty, unrealistic dream. Georges didn’t just have the dream, he had the plan of action to think about the circumstances to make the dream possible. Dreams on their own are utterly useless, but allied to a workable plan of action [they] garner the greatest of results, and that’s exactly what Georges had from the earliest days. You saw that plan of action. Getting on a bus in the middle of a Montreal winter to ride to New York City and a godforsaken gym. Spending nights next to weed-smoking lunatics, fighting for a place to sleep. A crazy plan, but in the end, it became real. In the end, Georges St-Pierre is the only student I’ve ever had who taught me more than I taught him.

veryg important for me

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.