VIDEO | New footage of Conor McGregor working head movement with Ido Portal

More movement to go along with all the huge amount of daily traditional work: mitts, heavy bag, cardio and lots of sparring. Keeping the brain quick, the eyes sharp, the feet light. When such a zero impact drill is involved the 'software is upgraded without damaging the hardware' (John Kavanagh) and extra motor learning and re-patterning can occur at scenarios that are hard to target in traditional sparring in such dosages and frequency. At the same time these are not rehearsed or pre-set sequences. This will need to be transfered later into sparring but provides room for experimentation, growth, research and lots of extra practice to feed into sparring and technical work. A major reason why many fighters can't break through plateus and fail to continue to evolve beyond a certain point is the minimal amount of experimentation, research and trial&error made possible inside a regime of solely heavy sparring rounds from one hand or simple, predetermined and dry technical work from the other. @thenotoriousmma #mcgregorvsmayweather #conormcgregor #idoportal #ufc #boxing #movementculture

A post shared by Ido Portal (@portal.ido) on Jun 24, 2017 at 3:03pm PDT

UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor has received quite a bit of criticism in regards to his preparation for his fight with Floyd Mayweather on August 26th, where he hopes to hand Mayweather his first professional loss.

Early on in camp, Conor McGregor and his team received criticism for a drill McGregor and movement specialist Ido Portal were filmed doing, where McGregor would attempt to strike playing cards as they unpredictably flew through the air. Portal explained the drill in a social media post, saying:

“REACTION is comprised often of a sizeable PREDICTION. Using the chaotic trajectory of a flying card to keep @thenotoriousmma 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. Ongoing work towards Conor McGregor vs Floyd Mayweather – August 26th. Just adding my small ‘squeeze of lime’ onto all the hard grind that goes on daily as it is – sparring, mitts, heavy bag, cardio, etc. “

Now, McGregor can be seen in yet another video with Portal, where he is working on his defense with a more common drill as he works on his head movement by dodging a foam noodle and touching the shoulder of Portal in an effort to mimic a countershot he would throw following a successful slip.

Check out the footage above!

on 7/1/2017.