John Danaher states that one of the greatest failures of his career is that he hasn’t got a female student that has reached championship status, at least thus far. He says he would love to remedy this, claiming that a female champion from his team New Wave Jiu-Jitsu is inevitable.
John Danaher has one area of his coaching career that he proclaims is a failure to date. In a recent interview given to Jiujitera magazine, the legendary coach was asked about the reason why there hasn’t been a Danaher female world champion yet, to which he answered in his own unique style:
“On the face of it, one of the great failures of my career, thus far, is that I’ve never produced a female champion. And it’s natural to ask me: “Why?
Part of the answer is that I never engage into recruiting; I never actively “pull” people to the gym… I open the door and whoever comes, I teach. So, it tends to be a self-selected group of people that I teach.
And the door is open two ways; to walk in and to walk out, and a lot of people walk out. My teaching style isn’t for everybody. Some people like it, some people don’t.”
Danaher also said that he never pushes people to compete, nor does he favor any one group of students offer another, regardless of sex:
In the gym itself, there is a pretty high number of females. But I never push people to compete. I was never the coach that would say: “Hey man, you’re good! You gotta go out and compete.” I’ve literally never said that. I never recruit and I never tell people they have to compete.
And so what happens is that the people who compete, always do so by their own volition. So, I do have many female students. Some of them do compete, but I don’t actively push them to compete.”
As John Danaher puts it, a Danaher-related female grappling champion is only a matter of time:
“I do believe that, inevitably in the future – as the number of female athletes increase – we will start seeing female champions. But I have never actively pushed for any one group of people to succeed in competition. So, it’s been a self-selecting process.
The females who train with me are already achieving a good level of competence and one day they’re going to be successful in competition”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hjk8ih7QqM&ab_channel=JiujiteiraMagazine
