MCGREGOR'S MAN One-One with Conor's Coach

After just surviving a one-hour personal training session with UFC champion Conor McGregor's coach, JOHN KAVANAGH, we sit down with the Irish instructor to talk MMA, mental health and how to become the next Notorious...

- JAMES COONEY

UFC superstar Conor McGregor is one of the most exciting and skilful athletes to ever compete in MMA, drawing the biggest ever pay-per-views and some of the most memorable knockouts in the sport's history. Conor's head coach, John Kavanagh, was in Australia recently to promote Alta – his in-gym MMA training program. So, the powers that be at MAXIM decided to throw me into one of his sessions... and possibly be a standin punching bag, if he needed one.

"Have you done this sort of thing before," asks Kavanagh in a soft Irish accent. I tell him I've done lots of boxing but the grappling stuff is all a bit foreign to me. “Don't worry," he assures me. “This will be fun." After a five minute warm-up, we start practising drills. Most of them relate to taking an opponent to the ground in the most efficient way possible. It may look simple on TV but, like most things in life, the details are very important. For instance, maintaining good posture or the way you grip an opponent's limb can be the difference between success and failure.

Next up we drill “tripod sweeps", which is a move where you sweep somebody from their feet if they are standing above you. After a few minutes I get the basic hang of it and we move onto something else. One position blended into the next, and the next and the next. By the time we'd finished 40 minutes of grappling, I notice my shirt is soaked through. It was a great and interesting workout, but the many hours I spent bashing away playing fighting games on the PlayStation as a kid, didn't really help that much. John and I catch our breath and have a chat.

Thanks for not killing us in today's training session, mate. How did you end up doing MMA?