Coaches, Educators, and Psychosis

Coaching Excellence or Crazy Eccentric?

I’ve been involved with combat sports for my entire adult life. I’ve been fortunate enough to sit ringside at UFC events and unfortunate enough to fight in smokers hosted by Hells Angels. I’ve watched my training partners kickbox in Glory and smelled the warm rank aroma of Thai Liniment pour off of an eight year old Thai boy’s body as he marched out to fight professionally in another nameless back alley ring Thailand can be notorious for. It doesn’t smell good.

These days I spend most of my time coaching jiu-jitsu and judging for FloGrappling’s professional event series, WNO. It’s a sweet gig, I get to see the highest levels of submission grappling competition and coaching. I sincerely hope to never go back to standing nose to nose with the parents of jiu-jitsu competitors while they scream and, hopefully unintentionally, spit in my face.

By no means have I done it all. I am an adept martial arts dabbler. I am overwhelmingly familiar with the prevailing cultures present within combat sports. I can with complete certainty say that martial arts are full of odd balls. I’m not just referring to the competitors, I’m talking about everyone involved. MMA, boxing, judo, wrestling, and every other activity that could be considered a martial art is bound to have a bunch of characters. The hobbyists, coaches, spectators, and even the parents of the children that get signed up all seem to have a screw or two loose.

This isn’t to say that myself and my fellow martial artists are maladjusted, we’re quirky! We keep things entertaining. By and large, if you go to any combat sports event you’ll have a hard time not being entertained. You’ll have a harder time meeting someone that is simple, straightforward and straight laced. Still, one eccentric oddball shines out beyond the rest, the notorious grappling and MMA coach John Danaher.

To say I am fascinated with Danaher would be a bit of an understatement. The man has a sinister magnetism that can’t be ignored. When Danaher walks into a room he is deliberate, scanning for precisely what he’s looking for before marching off with no expression. He never stops to say hi or chat even though he is always in a room of peers and familiar faces. I mean, the guy is bald, ghost white, and wears a fanny pack, dad shoes, and a rash guard everywhere he goes. If you didn’t know who he was you would think he’s scanning for police to avoid having recently escaped an asylum.

Danaher is an enigmatic recluse that has exploded in popularity alongside No Gi grappling’s growth. Much of Danaher’s acclaim is because of his students’ success, part of his popularity is due to his instructional videos, and some of his newly acquired status is due to his appearances on the wildly popular podcasts like the Joe Rogan Experience and the Lex Friedman Podcast. We don’t know much about him off the mats, but everyone in jiu-jitsu knows his name.

I’m fascinated with John Danaher and it isn’t because of the above, nor is it to do with his wardrobe. I’m fascinated with John Danaher because everyone that works with him claims he is an amazing coach.

Instructing Excellence

I teach No Gi grappling. Teaching no gi grappling means John Danaher and his students are required watching. When you watch his students’ matches it’s eerie. There is no emotion from the corner, minimal instruction, and monotonous announcing of the time, “Five minutes to work, Mr. Ryan”. This stands in stark contrast to the usual frantic shouting you hear from fighters’ cornermen. Despite this, Danaher has successful students across essentially every No Gi ruleset. Danaher’s students have taken home medals from No Gi Worlds, the Eddie Bravo Invitational, and ADCC. What’s most impressive impressive is that Danaher’s athletes all compete remarkably similarly.

Here is where I’m supposed to continue arguing for Danaher being the best coach ever. I just can’t bring myself to do that. Instructing can’t be the only element of coaching, the skill exists on a continuum. Some athletes need motivation and respond to unwavering positivity, something that Danaher himself claims he is notoriously not good at.

Consider Andre Galvao. The competitor-coach Galvao has won ADCC, IBJJF, and UAEJJF World Championships multiple times. Galvao also co-founded the elite jiu-jitsu team ATOS in the midst of his competitive career. Galvao is known for his team’s awards as much as he is for athletic dominance. Galvao has recruited, managed, and developed countless athletes to become world class talent.

If you’re ever at an event where Galvao is coaching, you’ll hear him before you see him. The mountain of energy is shouting commands and encouragement. Galvao wills his athletes to win from the sidelines and he has proven to be an amazing coach in almost exact opposition to Danaher and his style.

All of this is to say that we need a broader understanding of coaching.

What Makes a Good Coach?

Everyone that works with Danaher says that he is a wealth of knowledge. That’s more than supported by his instructionals. The sheer amount of information Danaher can retain and clearly articulate is alarming. But information on its own is useless. Unfiltered information can be overwhelming and unhelpful.

One of the most entertaining and unheralded books I have ever read is the memoir The Eden Express. The book follows the author and self-described hippie, Mark Vonnegut, as he graduates from college and drives to live at a commune in British Columbia. Vonnegut is joined by his friends and girlfriend and the whole thing sounds like a lovely experiment. Then you remember that the subtitle of the book is A Memoir of Insanity.

The Eden Express explains Mark’s break from sanity as he experiences the symptoms of what he believes is schizophrenia. He describes staying up for days on end and discovering connections between disparate ideas. These extremely disparate connections were hard to understand but he was on to something. And then he wasn’t.

Most, if not all, of the connections were completely fabricated. Mark was hyper-energized and overwhelmed with information. These conditions facilitated a lapse in sanity. Anything approximating this overstimulation would be less than helpful, if not outright harmful.

Thinking about the conditions conducive to insanity forces me to reflect on someone I met at a small jiu-jitsu tournament in Austin. I don’t know his name but I’ll never forget meeting him. He was coaching his son - well, he thought he was. Really he was screaming instructions at his nine year old boy en route to that child losing a jiu-jitsu match. The screaming session was supplemented by him, incorrectly, shaming me for starting overtime when I should have just kept the match going to “Stand ‘em up!” When explained the rules of the event he waved me off.

This man was trying to coach his kid. All he was doing was overstimulating himself and his child with frantic commands that didn’t amount to anything that made sense. This frightening excuse for a parent was charged with emotion until he jumped, shook, and transferred that mania to his son. I’m sure he wanted to help his child, all he did was prompt a horrifying crying session.

That man was fucking insane and his son was well on his way, two peas in a perturbed pod. That man stands as a stark contrast to anything that could be considered effective coaching. Regardless of one’s relationship to their athletes a coach should never be in a position where they are overwhelming them. At best that’s ineffective. At worst it drives the athlete to emotional exhaustion if not complete competitive failure.

Danaher doesn’t just aimlessly yell any technique that could, should, and might work. What a coach like Danaher provides is a filter for the best context relevant information possible, said succinctly.

Similarly when we’re struggling for that little bit of motivation, that push to get over the hump that’s all we need - a push. We don’t want to get driven over the hump and fall off the edge crying.

These are the two poles of the coaching continuum. On one end you have the educators, people like John Danaher, Trevor Wittman, and Matt Hume. Coaches that will give you the information you need to win. Across from the educators you have the managers. People like Andre Galvao, Greg Jackson, and Urijah Faber occupy this territory. These coaches give their athletes the energy, enthusiasm, and environment they need to win. No coach sits squarely on one end of the continuum lacking the other end’s characteristic. Some coaches, like Danaher and Galvao, just have a more obvious make-up than others.

Athletic education and management are both valuable in their own right. Is either one more valuable? How do we answer the original question, what makes a good coach?

Who’s Asking?

Being a coach is selfless. Sure every coach enjoys the sport they are a part of, but they’re actively giving their time away to their students. Most coaches do the activity with their students as well - they endure the trauma and twisting of techniques so their students can develop. They openly give their mind, body, and time to the next generation.

No one can completely change their core demeanor. Everyone can develop their own style to be the purest expression of that core demeanor. That’s exactly what Galvao and Danaher have done. Today Danaher is one of the premier instructors of martial arts - he molds people to his teachings with an inhuman degree of logical instruction. Galvao turns athletes into winners through regimented drilling, scheduling, and tireless work amongst a room full of elites that have gravitated to the room he has created.

Danaher and Galvao are both elite and everyone can learn something from both men.

If you’re a student reading this, ask yourself, do you need specific instruction, or someone to push you?

Coaches, ask yourselves if you are cool, calculating, and adept at transmitting technical information? Or do you love to be lively and lift others to their wins? Students come and go as their needs evolve. Your job is to develop yourself to develop others.