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MMA

23rd Jun 2017

Conor McGregor is using playing cards to prepare for Floyd Mayweather

An interesting drill

Darragh Murphy

Conor McGregor’s reflexes are on point.

‘The Notorious’ is being put through his paces in training camp as he prepares for the biggest payday of his career.

While he is going to to have some boxing coaches and sparring partners come in and out of his camp to ready him for the most daunting of debuts, against the 49-0 Floyd Mayweather, McGregor’s corner on August 26 will reportedly comprise his head coach John Kavanagh, striking coach Owen Roddy and SBG stablemate Artem Lobov.

Movement expert Ido Portal has also been reunited with McGregor and he’s incorporated an interesting training drill in a bid to improve the Irishman’s striking reactions.

Portal posted footage to Instagram of a drill which consisted of playing cards being flung at McGregor in quick succession and ‘The Notorious’ throwing shots as they flew through the air.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BVmy4jaBfww/?taken-by=portal.ido&hl=en

Portal’s methods have been questioned by cynics in the past, with McGregor’s former foe Nate Diaz’s comments on the Israeli movement coach going down in trash-talk lore.

“You’re playing touch-butt with that dork in the park with the pony tail.”

But the playing card drill does seem to make sense and boils down to an attempt to improve McGregor’s hand-eye coordination.

Portal explained: “Using the chaotic trajectory of a flying card to keep Conor McGregor sharp, adaptive and responsive to an unexpected situation, with focus on abandoning original prediction and installing a secondary one in a fraction of a second – an ability that often makes the difference between the BEST and just GOOD.”