Conor McGregor has a pretty unique approach to time.
When SportsJOE caught up with McGregor before his fight against Chad Mendes last year he told us that “Time does not exist, Only clocks exist”.
It’s an approach that he has always seemingly applied to his training regime as well.
The 145lb world champion has often spoken of how he sleeps until lunch time and then trains until the small hours of the morning.
In fact his sleeping late is so legendary that it is said that on the world tour to promote the title fight against Jose Aldo it became the task of his training partner Artem Lobov to wake McGregor because nobody else could get him out of bed.
But all that seems to have changed in the wake McGregor’s loss to Nate Diaz in March. There’s a new regime in place.
In an excellent piece in The Examiner about John Kavanagh and the SBG Gym, McGregor tells journalist Kieran Shannon how he changed the way he has trained since losing to Diaz.
“I was waking up late and training late, showing up here at maybe 2pm and still being here till one in the morning. Like a buzzing light. Buzzzz. I was never fully on and I was never off. I was just there.
“That’s not what this game is about. You need to be…On”
Now training begins at 1pm sharp and is structured entirely towards covering every base so that he’s ready to face Diaz in August.
“This [Diaz] fight is 25 minutes. Five five-minute rounds, four minutes rest in between. That’s what I need to be on for, so that’s what the sessions are tailed for. Come in, work hard, and go.
“Then rest, recover, and then when we come back in tonight, I’m working. Because I know it’s on and then it’s off. I push it and then I chill.”
McGregor’s coach Kavanagh also explains how they have tweaked things since March and reveals how the long and arduous build-up to the Jose Aldo fight in December (originally scheduled for July) had a knock on effect on McGregor’s training.
“We got caught up in it all. Everything just seemed to be going so well. The wins were coming easy,” Kavanagh said.
“I only went out on the Tuesday before the [McGregor-Diaz I) event. That’s insane when I look back on it. I had never done less than four weeks with him before that.
“After the Aldo fight, I’ll admit in terms of training Conor, my foot went off the pedal altogether. I got caught up with stuff in the gym. The gym is full-time in itself; I could lose Conor and still be busy here from 9am to 10pm.
“So because there was such a build-up to the Aldo fight, I was like, ‘OK, enough of that for a while’ and I threw myself into the gym. It was supposed to be only for a week or two but it turned into six or seven and then I realised ‘We’re just two weeks out from this and I’ve barely done a session with Conor.’ Now it’s every day. We’re here at 1pm. Sharp.”
It certainly sounds like McGregor and Kavanagh are leaving no stone unturned in their preparation for the Diaz re-match.
The full interview is well worth a read and you can get it here.
Roll on August 20th.
