When youโre the best fighter in the world today, they donโt call you a great fighter. They call you Chael Sonnen.
Chael SonnenAs soon as you hear a fighter say, "I'm working smarter, not harder," you always want to bet against that guy. That mentality does not work. You have to work hard. And sometimes that means you are going to work too hard. You are going to decline. You are going to tear down your body and your muscle fibers. You are going to get sick.
Chael SonnenI go to practice every day. I really don't have a training camp. In the boxing world, and that's where that came from, almost every time a guy would get out of the ring and he wouldn't break a sweat again until he went to his next training camp. He would do absolutely nothing until he started training for the next fight.
Chael SonnenIf I was mentoring a young fighter, I'd tell him to spend more time on boxing. That doesn't mean I would ignore kickboxing - you still need to learn the defenses - but in stand-up, it's hard to beat good, solid boxing.
Chael SonnenI went through a change in my life and my career where I finally understood how to train and prepare. I finally understood what it meant, and I've had so many fantasies about being able to go back and be 16 again. And redo parts of my high school career. Redo all of my college career. Redo my attempt to make an Olympic team.
Chael SonnenI found that to build mental toughness, you need to inconvenience yourself. The early morning runs, if you hate early mornings. The late night runs, if you hate late nights. The snowy cold, the worst conditions you can get, put yourself in those and really make it inconvenient and you start to get a genuine expectation of winning for the price you have to pay.
Chael Sonnen