Part Reptile: UFC, MMA and Me by Dan Hardy

Author:Dan Hardy [Hardy, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2017-03-22T23:00:00+00:00

6

THE FALL

My shot at GSP’s welterweight title was announced for UFC 111 in New Jersey on 27 March 2010. I wasn’t used to having a fight set in stone so far in advance, and all that extra time to think about what was coming down the road worked against me. I knew my body needed a period of total rest after the exertions of the Swick bout, but I was so eager to start my preparation for St-Pierre that I couldn’t stop myself from training. I slowed down somewhat for a couple of weeks, but I was still running, lifting and grappling every other day during that fortnight, so it was hardly a holiday. Then, come December, I officially began what was to become a sixteen-week training camp.

It was crazy, and looking back now I can see that. My enthusiasm for training actually peaked then faded while still inside camp and that is never a good sign for a fighter. But getting everything right in terms of preparation is one of the great challenges of mixed martial arts. I was always a real planner, with everything drawn up and documented on charts and schedules and highlighted in notebooks. With the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight vision, it was the wrong approach for me. I would keep to those schedules throughout the camp come hell or high water, and that invariably led to over-training. On days when I was carrying a knock, or just bone tired from pushing it too hard in a previous session, I still went on that run, lifted those weights, or strapped on my gear and sparred a few rounds. It is one of the symptoms of not having a specialised MMA coach to oversee everything. I was basically my own overall performance manager with complete autonomy over training. Part of the reason why I relocated to the US for my camps was to seek out that authority figure who could guide me through the process. But in reality, I was still always making my own decisions. When I first joined the UFC, I linked up with Ollie Richardson, the strength and conditioning coach of the Leicester Tigers rugby union team, and he became one of my best friends, as well as a fantastic addition to my team. There were big changes with Ollie on board, a much more professional feel. It was hard graft too, the Saturday morning sessions in particular a total nightmare. Ollie did his best to help me manage the overall schedule, but it was a big ask when my coaches were spread across three counties. In Leicester I would go and do a session with my jiu-jitsu coach and he would beast me for a couple of hours. From there I’d drive across town, or to another city, for another two or three hours with my Thai boxing coach and he would put me through the mill as well. An MMA camp is a real team effort, but often the different members of that team are not communicating enough to know what the other is doing or planning to do.

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