From his website:
Year of Birth: February 5, 1980 (age 31)
Place of Birth: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Other Names:
Nationality: Lebanese
Height: 5 ft 9 in (1.52 m)
Weight: 170 lb (77 kg; 12.1 st)
Speciality: Striking & MMA Coach
Gym: Tristar MMA
As a fighter Firas won many titles. He was the Canadian Muay Thai champion and won titles in Jui Jitsu as well. He was training as a fighter and sort of fell into the role as MMA coach. “The original trainer had a growing business and didn’t have much time for MMA.”
TriStar has been a martial arts studio since 1991, today the organization has expanded into 13,500 square feet of modern facilities. Using his extensive experience in training Zahabi has developed specific training for MMA.
Firas Zahabi says that, rather than train slowly but consistently; he will work with Georges St-Pierre on shorter, high intensity training sessions. "If you train for two to three hours, the intensity level can’t be the same as somebody who trains for one hour," he says. "So, the first 20 minutes of the training is warm up. We’re not really working out; we’re just stretching and getting the body warm. Then, we do only 40 minutes of work, but at as high a quality as possible, and by high quality I mean very intense."
Like a mathematician, Firas Zahabi has Georges St-Pierre's workout routine calculated to a science. "We don’t do anything bizarre," he says of the common-sense thinking they used in creating his fitness regimen. "We do kicking and punching drills on the pads. It’ll be 20 minutes of warm up (10 minutes warming up and 10 minutes cooling down) and 40 minutes of actual work. [GSP] is actually hitting the pads with one minute of rest in between so now, if you calculate that, he’s doing three-minute rounds and he might go up to 12 to 14 rounds, depending on the day and how high the intensity. But we’re not going to do two hours of striking... that’s the difference between us and the majority of other people."
"I always train with better wrestlers than me, better boxers than me, better jujitsu guys than me," Georges St-Pierre ays. "When you train with people who are better than you, it keeps challenging you. By challenging me it makes me better. It makes you better develop your skills than someone who is always training with the same people over and over again. I have a very good team.
When pressed what separates him from other coaches, the overly modest Zahabi answers. ” get in there with the guys and we go at it. I spar with Georges and spar with him 100%. I stay in shape and keep developing along with our fighters. I’m trying to get better each day too.”
“Another thing that I do is that people are always coming to our camp with some different training methods – things that are new. Some of them are great and some maybe don’t fit as well into our camp. But the fighters can’t try everything. So I will try it myself and if I think it will fit in, then I bring it to the guys.”
