John Danaher Interview Jiu-Jitsu VS The World

my Approach is B based around uh a group of fairly simple uh sentiments one is the first that a coach has to be there for a

reason that reason is Simplicity in itself a coach's primary function is to improve his students athletic performance if I can't pass that simple

test then I'm not worthy of being called a coach okay there should be noticeable improvements uh on the part of a student in live training and competition if if

I'm around them and if I'm not there then they should see a falling off in their progress now progress comes in

degrees um I'm happy to say that in some cases I've I've been successful in and and taking people to a fairly high level

in a fairly short time um the progress of my students is an indicator to me as a coach how I'm doing what's my

scorecard in terms of of uh uh my input in in the structure of the room that I'm coaching um and so I constantly monitor

my students day by day their progress and uh over the years I've been able to see certain ways of coaching which gave

better results and others which not not so much and uh and so over time I was able to refine my coaching method where I could closely monitor how much

progress people were making in how much time against what kind of competition and through simple trial and error success and failure I was able to um

come to a fairly solid method I think everyone brings a motivation with and when you think about it it's it's it's a strange thing that

would draw anyone to come in to train at all um I often say when someone comes in they have to have a certain amount of Madness just to enter the doors of the

academy there has to be some demons inside um everyone carries their own very personal demons within them but those demons bring them in the door but

it takes even bigger demons to keep them inside the door for long periods of time um no one's going to get a black belt in this sport without some physical suffering and some aches and pain to

tell their grandchildren about um in my case I came from the Philly normal uh middle class family in New Zealand so I can't really say there was you know I'm

not I can't give a story like Nick Diaz you know I came from some kind of tortured youth which drove me to fighting or something like that um but everyone I think has some kind of

competitive desire within them however much they keep it down or or restrain it and uh those who have perhaps a little bit more I think are attracted by the

idea of a sport where it's such an honest and open form of competition your whole body spirit and mind against another person's where there is a clear and definitive winner where what one

person wins and one person surrenders and um there's something attractive about that we all come from a darwinian competitive background that's our that's

our physical biological history um I see the world in terms of darwinian structure um and this is like a perfect darwinian game you have a large gene

pool of people who come in on their first day of training and 10 years later that pool is shrunk to the most competitive most Wily most adapted and

evolved of the people in that room um some would say the most insane who knows uh but I I love that Darwinism my my whole world view is essentially

darnis and there's no more pure sense of uh Darwinism than human combat what I like about Jitsu is that unlike other forms of combat whether it be Warfare or

crime or something there's no there's no negative side to it no one gets seriously hurt no one's possessions get stolen no one's lives get ruined or

endered um it's combat with benefits as opposed to most forms of combat where it's combat leads to tragedy or loss um there's no serious loss here the only

thing that gets hurt or bruised is your ego and um that that sense of perfect competition without dangerous

ramifications is what attracts someone into the doors of Jitsu have believe there's a sense in which it depends who I'm explaining it to if I'm explaining it at a social setting to a friend a

friend of a friend then I might just give them something that they're familiar with I might say well picture um the Olympic sport of Judo you've seen the Olympic Games well it's similar to Judo but more of an emphasis on

wrestling on the on the ground and uh or I might if they have no idea what Judo is they come from a country where there's no Judo I might say wrestling like if I'm in the Midwest of the United States it's like wrestling with a uniform on we instead of pinning them

you put them in something called a submission hold um I think the idea is to uh to point out what is the what is the essential characteristic of judu the

essential characteristic of judu is very simple it's the science and art of control that leads to submission okay what more complete Victory can there be than your

opponent's surrendering putting out a white flag okay if we're involved in a sport of wrestling and I pin you for 3 seconds on the ground has that resolved who's the better fighter between you and I no you could always say listen he

pinned my shoulders down for 3 seconds if a few more seconds I would have got out and kicked your ass um if I throw you flat on your back does that resolve the question of who's the better fighter well on concrete maybe maybe I would

have gotten up resume the fight and defeated you many people have been thrown got on up and got on to win the fight but when you surrender there's no ambiguity you gave

up we can both agree about that it's the most perfect form of victory it's the most complete and the most uncontested and I think everyone has

that sense and so I always try to explain Jitsu in terms of the notion of submission we're going to compete against each other within the realm of of wrestling or grappling

technique until one of us quits that's something that even the most naive person can understand and uh that's always how I try to explain

it you're asking an interesting question which is the question of how is jiujitsu useful outside of the wrestling world okay

um for an individual the greatest gift that I think they get from Jitsu is the idea of solving problems under

stress every second of every match you're ever involved in in Jitsu is an attempt to solve the problem that my opponent is presenting to me

but it's a problem unlike any other if I give you a simple mathematics problem 742 divided 13 it's a static problem I give you pen and paper you go

through the various steps and you come up to an answer but in Jitsu the problems aren't static they're Dynamic worse than that not only they

Dynamic I'm dealing with a cognizant thinking opponent which is trying to defeat everything I'm trying to do to them so with each second the problem changes

as I try to give a solution to problem a my opponent is already switching to problem B and then C D through all the way through okay so I have to be able to follow their problems not only am I

asked to solve problems but I have to solve them at a faster rate than my opponent is solving my problems and in this sense it's one of the trickiest problems you'll ever come across that's

why it has such an abil you to hold people and addict people because really the problems never get solved your opponent keeps getting smarter day by day and those same 10 people you train

with most of the time progress at roughly the same rate as you do and so you never get to beat them you never get to you know your progress never goes so fast so much faster than theirs that you

dominate them you're both progressing together it's not until you go back and roll with someone who's a complete beginner that you realize oh my god I've made progress I am getting better despite what I feel day by day in the training room where my opponents keep

getting good at the same rate that I'm getting good this ability to solve problems under stress is one of the most valuable

things that I think that any human being can have we live in a stressful world where usually most things are stacked against us just the simple Act of getting to

work some days can be tough and your ability to maintain a calm even mind and solve problems as they come flying at you with potentially bad consequences

that's a very very useful attribute for any human being to have now that's as far as an individual goes but let's ask a deeper question how does

Jitsu benefit not just in individual but groups of individual on a social level I would love for example to see

Jitsu taught in high schools throughout the United States and is a required physical activity why because I think not just Jitsu but

all of the martial arts uh I I'll say again all of the sporting martial arts have a very very valuable social function when you think about it it's

kind of crazy to think that we Advocate a sport which is so tied in with violence violence is usually seen as a as a very negative thing no one says you

know no proudly says I I condone violence and would look at person like there was some kind of crazy one um and yet Jitsu is undoubtedly linked to

violence okay it's the art of strangling people and breaking people's limbs okay it's a violent activity we look down upon violence in every other sphere whether it be crime or Warfare or what have you Mo anyone

who says I'm antiviolence most people would agree with I'm inol I'm involved in a violent sport strangulation Joint breaking but I'm generally a

pacifist let's go back to that idea of our darwinian world we live in a world where there is a massive population and a limited set of

resources and so the idea of competitive violence is inexplicably woven into human existence you couldn't be a pacifist on this planet and expect to

survive imagine an animal with completely pacifistic tendencies it would be wiped out in the first generation lions tigers hyenas would eat it it' be

gone the few pacifist societies that exist on Earth only exist because they were protected around the outside by more violent elements of that same Society they were within they couldn't

have survived by themselves and so a certain amount of violence is absolutely necessary to guarantee human existence it's a

competitive world if you can't compete you're not going to make it but too much violence is itself destructive Eternal Warfare will wipe out a civilization

just as surely as complete pacifism and so humans have to strike a balance between their desire to avoid violence and their ability to engage in

it and the martial arts is the perfect example of finding a happy medium between the two yes what we deal with is competition and violence but it's put

into an atmosphere where you can take away the negative elements of violence there's no serious injuries there's no death There's No Stealing of property

it's an honorable and safe form of violent activity and so it raises a generation of people who are capable of Defending themselves in a violent world

but will not promote violence it sublimates the dangerous aspects of violence criminal Behavior a

violent beh or Warfare and makes them work within a peaceful social setting and so good citizens can be great judicial

players they could easily survive in a violent competitive atmosphere they have the skills to do so but they won't promote violence that ability to find a

happy medium between the need for strong competitive human beings and our desire to avoid unnecessary or harmful violence is the reason why I believe not just Udu

but all of the sporting martial arts are an essential part of everyone's education the more I see the younger generation learning the happier I am

they learn that they can't be completely pacifist but on the other hand they can't be completely violent they have to find that happy meeting between them too and

Jitsu wrestling uh all of the even boxing all of the uh uh the various sporting martial arts teach that sense

they take a competitive potentially violent setting and take out the negative aspects of violence and make make it work within a social setting in a social

environment that's the social value of the study of the sporting martial arts by Nature I'm not a particular competitive I've been talking all this about competition yet I'm probably the

least competitive person in the room um um uh I would say what keeps me going in Jitsu despite the the many physical problems that I have one is a love of

solving problems as I said this is the most complex problem of them all okay you're dealing with Dynamic problems they're the most complex the most frustrating and those are the ones that

are most likely to drive you crazy um uh and uh so my love of problem solving was was definitely part of it but as I got

more and more involved in the sport something else occurred too I started to realize that my biggest joys in life came from not my own achievements at all

whatever small achievements I've made um rather my greatest Joys came from helping other people make their

achievements if you ask me to list all of my greatest experiences in lives in in my life all of them involve a assisting someone else getting to a life

goal and so I made a commitment not to myself in Jitsu but to the people I teach and ultimately what keeps me

coming in despite my many problems is my pride and uh my love of watching my my students succeed and and do well um

there's no joy like having a a student come home with a trophy in his hand and uh having defeated one of the greatest fighters in in the world I'll go give

you a common sense example um yesterday when you guys came into film shortly before you came in Gary tonan walked in who was just leg locked the guy that many people believe was the most

technical leg Locker in the world and he didn't say a word he just smiled walked across the mat and said thank

you and we didn't have to say a word we just knelt down and not a word was spoken but that feeling of of pride in his performance pride in

the progress that he's made in such a short time was immeasurably greater than anything for any Pride I felt for any achievement on my own that I've made in my life that's just a a common sense

example of of why I stay in this court um it's a magical feeling to help people to get to their

goals uh I I would hate to say that Jitsu was the only thing I can do I I I don't like the idea of being bound to

something um ultimately we're all human beings first and a human being can do many many things besides Jitsu um uh Jitsu is at a

uh it's it's currently the main thing in my life I I would unquestionably say that but would I say that for the rest of my life I'm guaranteed to only do jitu absolutely not I mean who knows

maybe 5 years from now I could lose my interest or some some new interest should should come along and I would dive into that um so uh it's unlikely I

I'll grant you that but uh I I would never say it's impossible [Music]

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