YouSaid · the spoken record

John Danaher

lines on the record: 326
first: 2022-10-10
most recent: 2022-10-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“You check social media, everyone's saying you're a god on the mat. And then you come into the gym and there's some old guy telling you you're not good enough. Every day it's like, well, what does this guy want from me? How hard do I have to work? Like, you're not good enough. Like, I want you to be the best in the world. I want you to be good. I want you to be great All of your friends are telling you all that, man, you're incredible. You submit me so easily to do this. And then this old guy is stating that you've got to get better. You got to work more. You're not working hard enough. Some point you got to be like, you know what, this old guy.”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I still believe in time things will be fine. Was an element where youngsters need to grow. And sometimes. Think about it this way from the athletes' perspective. It's definitely a generational problem. I'm much older than my students. And the years and the viewpoint that I have is a reflection of the time in which I grew up. And they're from a completely different generation with a completely different worldview. It's got to be hard from the athlete's perspective when you're training seven days a week and you're getting very, very good. You're beating everyone that's getting put in front of you. You're losing very, very rarely and it's always a tough competitive match when you do. Everyone around you is calling you a superstar. And you look phenomenal.”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a set of time, yeah. It was. I'm not a particularly emotional person, but it was an emotional time for everyone. It had an element of tragedy insofar as not only was it a team breakup, it was also a family breakup, which is much more serious. I do believe that in time... Even the most intense family breakup skin be reconciled. And I also believe that once dialogue begins, people will remember Just how easy it was for us to get along and how tight we were for many, many years. It's so easy to let a minute of anger destroy. Years of friendship. So But there's also the weight of those 10 years. When I ran into the old squad members at ADCC, we got along like a house on fire. It's like we never had a problem.”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But they all came through it so well, I'm immensely proud of what they did. And shockingly, in the space of less than 12 months, we went from rock bottom to having a more successful ADC team performance than we did the previous ADCC. It was in fact the most successful team performance of the event and is testimony to how hard those young men worked in the course of less than a year to prepare themselves.”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And very different rule sets. So WNO was a 15 minute match. The fight with Felipe Penna was no time limit, which is a very different format to compete in. And then ADCC. So we had to drag out a 14-week camp covering three matches with three different rule sets, which went and diametrically opposite directions. And the entire team had to go through all of this over this 14-week period. In addition to the previous year that they had been working hard, there was a further complication in the midst of all this, Nicholas Mirigali had to go to the GI World Championships and we had to throw an extra morning class for that to help him get ready. Nicholas went on to win the open weight gold medal in the Guy competition. And then the next day had to come back to Texas and begin his ADC preparation. It was a crazy, crazy time.”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And also, I believe the current Nogi World Champion and IBGJF. Or a tune up match, it's a warm up match. Then he would fight his old nemesis, Felipe Penna, the only man who submitted Gordon at Black Belt and had defeated Gordon in an ADCC match in 2017. And then ADCC itself. So there was going to be three big high-profile matches back to back.”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there was this long and tough preparation. It was compounded by the fact that as Gordon felt better, he felt a need to... Build up his own competitive record prior to ADCC because he had been inactive for so long with his stomach issue. So he proposed one of the most ambitious fight camps that I've ever heard of in Grappling, which was he would take on the current WNO champion, Pedro Mour”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But he had to show himself. So we enrolled him in local shows here in Austin where he had his first three Nogi matches. And with each match, you could see progress being made. And so that convinced the ATCC people, okay, he's good enough to compete. He ended up winning decisively a match against one of the greatest American grapplers of all time, Raphael Lovato. And this was a clear sign that his skill level in Nogi was sufficient to justify and invite.”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very, very hard. And we had many people come in and try to train alongside us. And they fell off by the side of the road within days, forget about weeks, months, or a full year of this I gave a very abbreviated set of skills for the athletes. I chopped everything down to what I believed were the most essential skills. Anything that wasn't essential to ADCC preparation was just pushed aside. And they had to focus almost entirely on ADCC with one exception. I'll come to that soon over the period of their training here in Austin. So it was compacted by time and also by the breadth of skill that I taught. Everything was just purely for ADCC preparation. In a very short period of time, Dan Manasoyu and Luke Griffith and Oliver Taza all won European trials and got into ADC. Nicholas Mirigali was already a superstar.”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know exactly what I teach because I've been teaching them a lot longer than I've been teaching you in addition to the other best people in the world. So it was an incredible challenge for them. And I must say all of them gave literally everything they had, everything I asked for, they gave twice as much. And we had a crazy training schedule, as many as three classes per day. I know that sounds easy, you know, three classes a day, but try doing it sometime. These classes are not your average classes. These are preparation for ADCC.”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's the head organizer. Was able to get Gordon Ryan not cured, but significantly better than he was before. And to a level where Gordon could train up to five to six days a week. And it was a big improvement on what was going on during the end of the time in Puerto Rico. So things started moving. We had a core group of athletes training at a local gym, which was very, very generously offered to us by the head manager of Roka sunglasses, a company here in Austin, Texas. They have a private corporate gym, which we were able to train in. these talented youngsters from around the globe essentially came together and I said you guys are going to have to train harder than you've ever trained in your lives because you've got less time to get ready for this than anyone and you're going to be going up against people potentially who”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Without a ghee once in his life. So his first ever no-gi training session is with Gordon Ryan, the best no ghee competitor of all time. And I remember Gordon texting me saying, hey, he's really talented, he's a nice guy, and he wants to come down to Texas and train. So I was like, wow, sounds great. So over time, just more and more people started coming in. And I told everyone, like you guys are at a severe disadvantage. you've got very little time to get ready for ADCC. Luke wasn't even at ACCC. He had to win trials. Same for Dan Manasawy. He had failed at trials and needed to get a win to even get into ADC. So around this time, a doctor suggested by Mojasm, who had himself had stomach issues earlier in his life, began working with Gordon Ryan.”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Came in. He had lost in the European trials for ADCC, and he was down on his lark. He came into Austin. He did a show against a local purple bout and lost again. So I was, I... Feeling bad about his performance in his future, and he came in and I thought he was a lovely kid who worked hard and trained well. So he became one of the main training partners. He was similar size to Gordon. So I encouraged him to train with Gordon whenever he could. And more and more people started coming in to train under that kind of basis. One day I got a text from Gordon who was filming an instructional video in Boston. He said, hey, you know, Nicholas Mirigali was training at this, he was shooting video at the same time as me and we just did some grappling. He's a really nice guy and he's literally never trained without a ghee before. For those of you who don't know, Nicholas Miragali is one of the outstanding ghee jiu-jitsu competitors of his generation. He has an amazing game and is a superstar with the ghee side of the sport, but had never even trained.”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First one to come down. He moved from Boston to Austin, Texas. I began teaching at a local school. It was rather like going back into my earliest days in Juditsu. I went from teaching at the big Henzo Gracie Academy to a tiny school in Puerto Rico and now an even smaller school in Austin, Texas. And locals would come in and train and I would watch every day teaching there twice a day, seven days a week. And I would see people come in and train and I would say this guy has some potential or this guy has some potential. And I would recruit people and bring them to another gym where they would train with a professionals. And if they proved adept and hardworking and someone who can work well in a team, they would stay and build their skills. It's time went by. More and more such people started coming in and we had some remarkable people like a young South African purple belt, Luke Griffith.”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it's a steak. I wasn't confident that ADCC 2022 would go well because we only had one year without a gym and with a team that was completely broken up to even attempt to get into ADCC. So things looked a little grim, but I was confident given enough time I would get in a new group of students and work. As it turns out one of the demonstration partners that I used during filming for instructional videos, who lives in Boston, John Carlo Badoni was interested in the idea of coming down and training, but he had always felt like it would be difficult because there were people in his way class who were already there and he felt it would be awkward. But now that they had left that opened up an area for him.”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My thinking is Everything bad passes in time. I've had a lot of bad points in my life. So my life experiences whenever things seem dark. Have patience, time will ultimately cure most ills, not all of them, but most of them. And I'm confident that if you give me a new crop of students, I can. I can produce magic, but it's going to take time.”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. So that was a time when it was like, man, the whole program seems to be dead in the water at this point. Most of the competitive athletes were gone. There were very few training partners for the few that remained. And the main athlete around whom the group had initially bonded was seemingly out of action, possibly permanently.”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Years. This is one year out. So roughly three quarters of the competitive athletes left in one week. So at that point, that was probably the lowest point because at that point, not only did we not have a place to train, we had very few training partners for the few that had remained. The main athlete in the team, Gordon Ryan, was going through a particularly bad spell with his unresolved stomach issues. And there was doubt as to whether or not he could compete at all and was actively thinking about retiring from the sport.”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So be it, but let's all just stay together until ADCC 2022 was a unified team, go out, prepare yourselves as best you can. And then after that, we can make a decision as to whether we break up or not. But that was rejected and the team split. And they moved to Austin. We'd made prior arrangements to go to a local gym. And they took that gem and we were left with no gym and more or less homeless in Austin.”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Long as the period leading up to ADCC so that everyone could train together. So I said, okay, there's problems, but let's just tough it out one year. We moved to Texas. Let's just go there and keep unity. If some people don't want to train with other people, that's fine. But I believe that the team would be weakened by breaking apart. I believe that they had an excellent rapport as training partners. The technical level was increasing dramatically. Many of the younger athletes are really starting to come into their own and really develop well. And so my take on it was, okay, if there's problems.”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love you. He doesn't. He's lying So, as time went by, these tensions started increasing. They came to a point where it was difficult for them even to be in the training room together. At that point, you're starting to, you know, once training takes a hit, then you've got to start to address these. The attempts at reconciliation fell through. Decision was made to move to Texas. I wanted everyone to move as a team. What I wanted to do was keep the team together”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I believe it had the effect of magnifying whatever tensions there were, in particular there was a family tension between two brothers which magnified over time. And so often is the case, you get two brothers growing up, one older, one younger, and the younger one wants to. Grow and feel somewhat like a young tree underneath a bigger tree. Sometimes people just need their space. So there was some unhappiness.”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tension between team members, and inevitably there will be in a competitive sport where everyone's fighting each other, you can kind of bury them in the size of the setting because there's so many distractions in New York. You know, you come in, you do your workout, you go outside, and it's New York City. In Puerto Rico, we lived in a very small local town, Dorado. Most of the athletes were living with each other. And so unlike New York, where there was always a break, you train together, but when training was over, you went about your life in New York and New Jersey with everyone living in very close proximity to each other, any tensions got magnified because there was no relief from them. You didn't get to get away from people. If you had a problem with someone on the mat, well, now you had to live with them for the rest of the day and the night. And this goes on for a long period of time.”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Officials of ADCC MoJasm. So they loved their experience in Puerto Rico. And almost everyone wanted to go down there. So I tried to explain to them there's a world of difference between going to a place for vacation versus living there. But that didn't have any effect. So the decision was made, a majority decision was made to go to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico, the conditions in which the team lived changed significantly. When you're in New York, New York is such a big city that if there's any”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Complete breakup between myself and a team, or I would have to leave New York. There was a difficult decision for me to make as I lived in New York for 30 years. I'd built my life there and had most of my friends and associates that I know here in America, New Yorkers. So I thought, you know, these guys have been incredibly loyal to me as students. So I should also be loyal to them, of course. So I decided that if they wanted to leave, I would go with them. We decided to go to Puerto Rico because there was a private gym where we could train through the COVID period. I personally wanted to go to Texas. I thought that Texas was a better place for the team to go. But many of the students, including senior students like Gordon Ryan, Craig Jones, had been to Puerto Rico and stayed with one of the”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We had a very, very tight team for many years, which began in New York City. During the peak of COVID training in New York became very difficult to sustain. So most of the team despised the city of New York. I was the only person in the group that liked living in New York. I think part of the problem was that I was the only one who actually lived in Manhattan. The others had to commute to New York. And there's a world of difference between living in New York and commuting to New York. So most of them had a very negative view of New York City. That was compounded by COVID. Even the basic act of training became very, very difficult. And so everyone decided they want to leave. So there was a prospect of...”
2022-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #328 – John Danaher: Submission Grappling, ADCC, Animal Combat, and Knives · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source