Danaher has been a controversial figure for quite some time. His social media presence allowed us all to catch a glimpse at some of his philosophies and gain insights into some dramatic events that occurred along the way.
In the latest mini essay Renzo Gracie Team coach took the opportunity to outline the 3 goals he’s already achieved and what he hopes to achieve going forward.
In addition to outlining these goals he’s also announced what is hopefully a great spot on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. We can’t wait to tune in and find out more about him and how he runs things. Here are his goals, as outlined by his social media account:
As a coach, I often try to set goals for myself and my students. These goals vary greatly in scope and size.
For example, I might have a small goal over the next seven days, or a bigger project over the next three months. At any given time there may be dozens of different goals for different people, stretching over different lengths of time. Whilst all of these daily, weekly and monthly goals are being set and (hopefully) attained, there must be larger goals – goals which go on to define your career as a coach or athlete.
In my life I set three intitial large scale goals as a coach. The first was to be a part of the development of truly significant figure in the sport of MMA. I wanted to be a part of the transition of MMA from its early days as single discipline fighters engaged in battles against other styles into the modern era of well rounded athletes who saw MMA as an autonomous sport quite separate from the various core disciplines that most people believed made it up. I believe I achieved this goal through the tremendous career accomplishments of Georges St-Pierre.
My second goal was to help in the development of a fighter who would defeat the only person I believed had a legitimate claim to contend with Mr St-Pierre as the greatest UFC fighter of all time, Anderson Silva. Mr Silva was considerably bigger than Mr St-Pierre and the negotiations for a superfight were never satisfactory for both sides and the organization – so training a genuine 185 pounder for the fight made more sense. I believe I achieved this goal through the tremendous career work of Chris Weidman.
My third goal pertained to the sport of grappling/jiu jitsu rather than MMA. I wanted to change the traditional perspective in our sport of leg locks as a low percentage desperation move that ran outside of the standard “position before submission” model and show that leg locks could be made part of a grappling system that was every bit as effective, reliable and control-based as the more commonly seen upper body submissions usually favored by our sport. I believe I achieved this through the burgeoning careers of Eddie Cummings, Garry Tonon and Gordon Ryan.
I am now working on my fourth goal; to greatly enhance and improve the notion of system-based thinking in the sport of jiu jitsu in ways that significantly improve athletes ability work submissions ranging over the entire body into their game; and through this, change people’s attitudes about the notion of innovation and progress in our sport.
The notion of systemic thinking underlies the entire fabric of jiu jitsu, indeed, I believe that the fact that traditional BJJ had a simple, coherent and very effective system of strategy and techniques was the single most important reason for its success in early MMA. It explains why it dominated less systematic approaches to fighting in those early days.
Over the next few months I will have to explain exactly what a system is (in the context of martial arts), some of the limitations of the traditional BJJ system and how these can be improved upon to create more advanced approach to the sport that can help it towards its ideal – control that leads to submission. A discussion along these lines will open up many fascinating topics, far too many for one Facebook post, but will feature in many future posts that will hopefully shed some light on my project.
I also hope to discuss some of these notions with a man who has done a great deal to promote jiu jitsu to a very wide audience in the related world of MMA in a podcast format – Joe Rogan (when scheduling permits). Some aspects of this exciting new approach have started to emerge in the work of my students and I hope we will begin to illustrate still more in the future. Of course in any highly competitive endeavor there will be ups and downs, successes and failures, but the emerging patterns are very positive and I believe fervently that they can be of great benefit to the jiu jitsu community as a whole. Our squad has a 100% success rate in the top echelon submission only event – The Eddie Bravo Invitational – we have never entered without winning – with a submission defense and offense rate that dwarfs rival teams. Is it a fortuitous accident or indicative of an underlying systems based approach that can help improve the sport?
Sloth Jiu-Jitsu: you can be slow and unathletic and still kick butt in Jiu-Jitsu.