And we haven’t even talked about the giving of knives at promotions and the corny ass speeches. I appreciate John’s desire, but Jesus is he pompous and a dork.
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Yup 100%. Like I said he wouldn’t be my first choice lol. But id be on the C team or a junior junior member anyway so…
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He’s an odd duck, that’s for sure. I appreciate what he’s put out there for me to use on the mats.
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Yeah, I understand. Im more of a “KISS” guy. Keep it simple stupid
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When Danaher started getting a reputation back in the day, 99% of the academies were still extremely disorganized, run by guys with iffy English skills and not much of a systematic approach. That’s why Rorion had such a good reputation for his teaching ability because he wasn’t like that. He explained things clearly and in a way people could understand, chain together, and remember. Danaher on the other hand was the type to over analyze moves and people thought they were getting this holy grail of information. As you get more advanced and further along sometimes you realize a little less is more. Don’t get me wrong I think Danaher is more knowledgeable about BJJ than I’ll ever be, but his teaching style wouldn’t appeal as much to me as others.
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Yup. Less is more. Imo. That goes for “A game” as well IMO.
John’s method is great if you want to understand the WHY. Most people do not learn why we do anything in jiu jitsu, just to do it like this and that.
Now here’s the catch - when you are learning, you don’t NEED to learn why. It’s hard enough to execute the moves as it is. So you are filling unnecessary information and precious limited resources if you try to explain every why and every detail important to you. You just need the big picture and get them to do the technics as functional as possible as fast as possible. You can learn the why later.
So a lot of ppl will look back on all these moves once they are “literate” with the moves but fill in the blanks with the why. And then get their mind blown. That’s a large part of why John is so revered.
The reality? I know many MANY students who watch his instructionals and they can regurgitate some of the things he explains - but they still can’t hit the move. But it “feels like learning,” I guess. My theory is that sometimes this actually HURTS us - at least as a beginning (white/blue belt) student. It’s overthinking, really. I think that’s why John is a phenomenal coach to those already quite accomplished to fill in those gaps even more. I would guess his beginners, if he has any anymore, are not studs at all but just the same if not actually worse off than your run of the mill coach.
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Love him, hate him, or have no clue who he is: Greg Glassmann from CrossFit talked about the “black box”. You put shit in the black box, some magic shit happens and the result comes out the other side. What happens in the box? Who gives a shit. It works.
Sometimes that’s the way you need to look at BJJ.
There’s people who will never really be able to do anything but parrot the techniques they’re shown, the truly talented are able to understand jiu jitsu on a much more conceptual level and actually have a good understanding what they’re doing at all times and why it works.
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They take it very seriously
They are very successful as well
Understood. But you can still take it very seriously without taking yourself so seriously and be very successful.
I kinda feel like understanding WHY, is super important when teaching. I have totally revamped how I teach complete beginners. By teaching them conceptually and demonstrating WHY we do certain things, it allows for a good understanding of what you are trying to achieve. It also gives a focus on what the “end game” is. All of the feedback I have received has been very positive, and they really highlight how it has helped them understand.
Case in point, do you teach a side control escape, or explain the concept of pinning someone, and why it works mechanically (crossface, wedges, a closed loop around them, shoulders pinned to the mat)? By explaining WHY you need to control inside space, create frames, create space, get shoulders off the mat, reinforce frames, then reguard, they not only learn the HOW, but WHY, and how to better troubleshoot problems when escapes aren’t successful.
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Wow… very nice!
But, when you think about it… that really is a LOT of time, effort & money just to not ever train people how to defend against a punch.
Regarding the concepts vs moves discussion, on the Bjj Mental Models podcast they are always espousing the benefits of a conceptual approach to bjj which I find interesting and of great value. Everything can be broken down into base, structure, frames, and levers.
But one of the guests they had on (maybe Jonathon Thomas?) was opposed to this. His philosophy is very much “If they do this, you do that”, move/counter move. And he made the point that I think someone upthread made - that the conceptual side of things is nice to reflect on after you know how to do moves, but it is entirely unnecessary in order to have good jiu jitsu. Or words of that nature.
I agree with him.
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I think different approaches work for different types of people. Teaching an unathletic, zero sports experience two week white belt an armbar is one skill and preparing a purple belt for adult worlds is a completely different one, for instance. Like literally zero carryover.
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There is variance in each movement/move but really those that work and those that don’t are pretty much figured out. I may have the dlr hook a little higher on the hamstring than you but it’s still dlr and the goals are the same.
Does it matter? They’re so small its not like BJJ is gonna work anyway
Slaps. I always thought the Mendes brothers would be more concerned with defending against slaps and maybe hair pulling.
Probably depends on the person. A roomful of beginners? I don’t think it’s so important. I think it’s more important to get them going. For me, personally, I agree - I want to know WHY to put my arm there or put my foot on that hip. For your average recreational guy – and for retention’s sake – you just want them to be able to do it asap. It’s how I learned, looking back. I am now understanding how my coach’s big picture approach got me hooked and actually got me doing most of the technics pretty quickly. Long winded explanations might’ve lost me - and most ppl… there are certainly plenty of upper students that fulfilled this and it usually bored me. think this kind of stuff is beneficial once you are literate in the language, so to speak. It’s better to just be able to talk in conversation before learning the breakdown of the sentence structure and word etymology etc
Now that said, I have a problem with this very thing. The way I teach IS somewhat long winded and trying hard to convey why. I don’t want to skip details, but when you are in a roomful of beginners and not so beginners, it’s easy to lose attn / boredom. This is something I am trying to dial in as an instructor I also think the “academic” approach is where seminars and other types of classes could benefit from the more in depth type of knowledge transfer.
One thing is certain - you cannot please every student. I once asked a class of 40 ppl if they would like more warmups or less. To my surprise, it was half and half. I was certain most would say no warmups. Turns out, about half the ppl were there largely to get in shape, work out without feeling like working out, lose weight, etc. Same goes for teaching style for sure - some will want every detail. Some just wanna see the f’ing move twice and go.
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I agree w/ speedking9. A trap a lot of instructors fall into --myself definitely included – is teaching TOO much about a technique or topic.
If you’re teaching more than about 3-4 minutes, you’re probably teaching too big of a piece of information at once or you’re getting into TOO much detail.
The most important thing is that the students start practicing the move ASAP, not that you tell them every detail before they even try it. That’s just not good teaching. You shouldn’t get into fine detail until the students have physically done the move. It can be satisfying to the TEACHER, to show a lot of detail, but it really doesn’t help students very much --especially if it is their first time with the move.
Besides, it’s a scientific fact that no matter what you say, your students are only taking in roughly about 20% of that information.
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