At just 19, Helena Crevar has already made grappling history, becoming the youngest ADCC champion ever after capturing gold at 143 lbs (65kg) with three straight submissions…

And in a recent interview on the FloGrappling Show, she opened up about her path to that moment and the significant role coach John Danaher has played in her development.

Born and raised in Las Vegas to Serbian parents, Crevar started martial arts at three, trying Kajukenbo and even ballroom dance before discovering Jiu-Jitsu at eight.

Her first class happened to be no-gi:

I tried the Jiu-Jitsu class and I really liked it and actually my first class was a no gi class and then after that I trained gi pretty much for the next five years at least.

Just three months into training, she asked her parents if she could compete, a request that surprised them given she’d shown no interest in competing in other sports.
Nine months later, at nine years old, she won her first tournament match with a rear-naked choke over an older, higher-ranked opponent.

Crevar’s awareness of ADCC began early too. At 12, she came across the 2019 championships on FloGrappling and immediately set her sights on the event.
By 14 or 15, she was already competing in trials and reaching the quarterfinals, and that same year attended ADCC in Las Vegas as a spectator with her parents.

Training under Danaher became a turning point in her career.

Before relocating to Texas at 15, Crevar was already studying his instructionals back in Las Vegas, dedicating time before every session to absorb his teaching approach:

Around age 13, I was still living in Vegas and I’d actually buy John’s instructionals and I’d like studied them for an hour before training.
And then I’d take some of those techniques, try them in training, and implement them. I liked his style of teaching online.

The move to train under him at what was then New Wave Jiu-Jitsu, now Kingsway, turned out to be worth it:

So me and my parents thought it would be a good idea to move to Texas and actually learn from him and it’s like the best decision we’ve made.

One of the more notable aspects of her training is that she rolls almost exclusively with men:

My parents never really liked me competing against boys because of ego and stuff like that. But in training, pretty much since the beginning, I’ve mostly trained with boys. And I joined the adults class pretty quickly around age 10.

Right now 99% of my training is with men. So for me, like it’s never been an issue or anything.
As long as I have good training partners that know how to level their game so they’re not using too much strength or trying to injure me or anything like that.

But I feel like that helps me kind of improve so that when I am competing against girls, it’s kind of I’m already prepared with the guys.

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