Coming back: One of the toughest things for a professional athlete to deal with is coming back to his or her sport after an extended lay off/retirement. During that time off two things happen. First, there is an inevitable decline in the athletes performance without the incentive for growth spurred by upcoming competition. Second, the sport itself progresses forward in the athletes absence as new athletes uncover new avenues to victory. The combination of these two makes a successful comeback a very difficult thing – the longer the lay off, the tougher the task. An interesting feature of this weekends match between the great Floyd mayweather and Conor McGregor was that Mr Mayweather was coming back after a two year absence. There were several moments where that lay off seemed to be evident as his overall movement quality was not as high as it normally is. history shows many examples of both success and failure in coming back. One of the great successes was that of the great Sugar Ray Leonard coming back after three years to take on the formidable Marvin Haggler. He took a controversial victory and showed it could be done even against the very best opponents. On November 4th at Madison Square Garden, George's St-Pierre will take on Michael Bisping after a massive four year lay off. Not only is the time off a problem, he will fight at a heavier weight class. This will surely be the most difficult comeback project I have ever been involved in. The success or failure of comebacks is often related to the amount of training the athlete has engaged during the time off, their motivation levels coming back in and the physical state of their health. Mr St-Pierre never got out of shape in retirement and has trained well throughout. He is very motivated to try the challenge of the bigger weight class. The two biggest problems will be his health (two major knee operations and recent eye issues leading to surgery) and the degree to which the game itself has evolved in his absence. Due to the relative youth of MMA as a sport, it changes and evolves with great rapidity. This will be a fascinating camp, played out among the warnings and inspirations of past comebacks.
