“No shoes or egos beyond this point.”
So reads the sign that greets you just before you approach the mats in Straight Blast Gym on the Naas Road.
Head coach John Kavanagh has watched his gym blossom into one of the most sought-after training locations for mixed martial arts in Europe after guiding Conor McGregor to featherweight glory on the grandest stage of all, with other representatives like Paddy Holohan, Gunnar Nelson and Aisling Daly all right up there in terms of elite-level fighters.
Speaking to IMMAF.org, Kavanagh has explained what sets his gym apart from others and how his training methods have evolved over the years.
He said: “Of course, things improve as time goes on, my personal technical knowledge now is vastly different from what it was ten years ago. The other side would be that I work a lot on trying to build a guy’s self confidence. When you’re trying to do something at the beginning you’re probably going to be failing a lot and that can be difficult for a young person’s ego. It’s easy to point and laugh when someone is slipping and falling with something new, but I try to point out what they did right about it, and encourage repetition, drilling and practice. Eventually they will get it right and that’s the mental side.
“Conor himself has that X-factor and charisma, whatever you want to call it, that has lead him to being followed by millions of people, but I think the physical side of what he’s doing I can replicate. I’ve already got guys coming through like Frans Mlambo who won the IMMAF World Championships, and Ben Forsyth who won the IMMAF European Open. I’ve got other guys coming behind them like James Gallagher, Sinead Kavanagh who got a silver medal at the World Championships, and Lee Hammond who made it to the last four of the European Open. The physical side is the easier side and the mental side is tougher.”
While SBG is certainly well on its way to producing future champions like the ones mentioned above, the biggest star in the gym is undoubtedly Conor McGregor, who unified the UFC featherweight title with a famous 13-second knockout of Jose Aldo last month.
Much had been made in the build-up to the main event of UFC 194 about McGregor’s work with movement coach Ido Portal but Kavanagh maintains that he has always been a proponent of intelligent training that focuses more on improving fighters rather than having his students try to out-tough one another in sparring.
“I like that our message is about training smart rather than training hard,” Kavanagh said. “That’s a side of the sport that I’m very interested in and I educate myself on. I’m talking about sparring less, sparring more sensibly and with lighter contact in the gym. Certainly when I began there was a sort of macho image about having wars in the gym, and that’s something we’ve tried to turn around. You’ve seen Conor talk about upgrading the software while keeping the hardware intact, and there’s videos of him with Ido Portal keeping the body healthy rather than lifting big weights and hitting each other hard.
“I can’t go on to Facebook without a sponsored ad popping up with some strength and condition place now offering ‘movement classes’ – that’s just worldwide now. I’m a huge Rickson Gracie fan. Anybody can watch Choke, it’s over twenty years old – an old documentary with Rickson Gracie getting ready for the All Japan Vale Tudo Open, and in it he’s doing all these drills that are very similar to the ones that Conor and Ido are doing. As the saying goes there’s nothing new under the sun, but it’s nice that someone with Conor’s platform is rejuvinating the message, again giving the message of looking after your body and keeping healthy. Your competitive peroid in martial arts or any sport is narrow enough, but the ability to move freely and pain free is a goal for anybody throughout their life.”
