Going to dump clips from Lex Fridman’s interview with John Danaher, one of the best MMA+BJJ coaches in the world.
Both Fridman and Danaher are BJJ black belts, with experience in Judo. They go very quickly to the interesting edges of both martial arts.
Thread.
Conversation
First clip is Fridman talking about the hard part about “make mistakes during sparring training” — people think you suck when they beat you. Danaher replies, “You think world champions don’t feel that?”
1:26
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“I’m a huge advocate of handicap training, where you place yourself at a handicap (…) (Gary Tonon) has taken that to heart to a level that few people can match.”
“I just wonder what his psychology is like?”
“You have to understand, Lex, it’s just skill development.”
1:30
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Next series of clips is about new technique development. Danaher pioneered the use of body locks as a weapon against strong guard fighters. All of his students use it.
1:16
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“How did you discover that?”
“… in a room full of dangerous leg lockers, we needed a way to shut down the hips. And once we started using body locks, we saw that this was an excellent way to get around that problem.”
Then: a huge amount of trial and error.
1:24
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Replying to
And then, my favourite topic: how do you do good trial and error? (This applies to more than just BJJ; it applies to business and innovation in general).
“There’s a spark, you’ll see something (and go), hmm, there’s possibility there. And then you’ll meet a lot of failure.”
1:02
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You want to strike this balance between not giving up too early and giving up when it’s clear that it’s too difficult to find a working variation.
(Of course, easy to say, but demands a great deal of tacit taste).
1:30
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Related: the importance of training new techniques on lesser belts.
1:26
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Next set of clips is related to Danaher’s basic pedagogical insight for BJJ: championship performance begins with escape mastery.
(Note: this isn’t true for Judo, due to the rule setup).
1:29
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What’s interesting about this pedagogical insight is that it leads — via inversion — to all of Danaher’s training approaches.
“When you enter into a jujitsu match, you know there are only a handful of ways you can lose (…) works backwards so you don’t get caught in one of them”
1:19
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Danaher’s overall training program therefore is split into two prongs:
For beginners, work from the ground up. For experts, work from the endgame backwards.
1:23
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“It’s interesting. My students have by far the highest submission rate in contemporary jujitsu, but they only learn 6-7 submission holds. (…) if they truly believe that if they get to one of those 6 positions, they’ll win, come competition, they will find a way to get there.”
1:14
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