When Georges St-Pierre recently shared his view that he does not believe in cardio for combat athletes, preferring efficiency over endurance, veteran MMA coach Ray Longo provided his take on the matter in the Anik and Florian Podcast.
Longo did not dismiss GSP outright. In fact, he started by defending the mindset behind the approach.
“He believes it. That’s all that matters,” Longo said. “There’s nothing wrong with sprints, but I’ll give you an example. If I have a guy sprinting, right? He feels great and then somebody else tells him, ‘Sprint that, it’s going to ruin you.’ That guy is done.”
He continued: “He’s done with the sprint. George believes it. He says he even argues with Firas. It puts him in a good spot. That’s all that matters. Just move.”
Longo brought up Merab Dvalishvili as a counterpoint to the idea that cardio is irrelevant in combat sports.
“Merab besides doing everything, he gets his endurance from doing what he does,” he said. “He wrestles every day. He spars every day. He’s got cardio for days because where it’s figh ting to other guys, it’s just a normal day for him.”
Host Florian acknowledged the sport leans anaerobic but did not let that erase the value of longer runs. He said, “I’ll say the sport is more anaerobic than it is aerobic. That’s not to say I would go out and run 10 miles a couple times a camp because I just wanted to do it for me. It’s kind of like a mental test. I know where I was at.”
He also framed GSP’s approach as something that was specific to who GSP was as a figh ter. “It also caters to Georges and his skills. I think we’d all agree that he was pretty damn explosive over the course of his career,” Florian stated. “His double leg was unstoppable. He was so quick with his jab. Those are things that brought out a lot of the natural instincts and strengths of George St-Pierre as a fig hter. Of course it’s like, ‘Hey, I’m fast, I like doing fast things.'”
Longo went on to address the trend he sees among current athletes and coaches.
He said, “Today I talked to a lot of coaches, nobody wants to put the work in anymore. They just don’t. We’re in a TikTok generation. I don’t know what it is. We kind of all came up the other night saying it has to be social media. That’s the common denominator over the last 10 years, that people are more interested in putting a post on and getting their a*s to the hills and running.”
He closed with a challenge. He said, “There’s nothing stopping you from building your cardio every day. There’s nothing stopping you from that except yourself.”
