John Danaher: The Path to Mastery in Jiu Jitsu, Grappling, Judo, and MMA

Lex Fridman (01:29.200)

There's no warmup?

Lex Fridman (01:30.040)

That's it?

Lex Fridman (01:30.860)

No warmup.

Lex Fridman (01:31.700)

No jumping jacks?

Lex Fridman (01:34.060)

Let's break that down into two questions.

John Danaher (01:38.160)

I'm a human being, and like any human being,

Lex Fridman (01:40.660)

I'm biologically programmed to be terrified of death.

John Danaher (01:45.440)

Every physical element in our bodies

Lex Fridman (01:49.400)

is designed to keep us away from death.

John Danaher (01:52.240)

I'm no different from anyone else in that regard.

Lex Fridman (01:54.880)

If you throw me from the top of the Empire State Building,

John Danaher (01:58.340)

I'm gonna scream all the way down to the concrete.

Lex Fridman (02:01.220)

If you wave a loaded firearm in my face,

John Danaher (02:03.760)

I'm gonna flinch away in horror

Lex Fridman (02:05.440)

the same way anyone else would.

Lex Fridman (02:09.080)

So in that first sense of, are you afraid of death?

Lex Fridman (02:15.320)

My body is terrified of injury leading to death

John Danaher (02:18.760)

the same way any other human being would.

Lex Fridman (02:21.720)

So when death is imminent, there's a terror that.

John Danaher (02:24.400)

Yeah, I go through the same adrenaline dumps

Lex Fridman (02:26.560)

that you would go through.

Lex Fridman (02:28.920)

But on the other hand,

Lex Fridman (02:29.960)

you're also asking a much deeper question,

Lex Fridman (02:31.680)

which is presumably, are you afraid of nonexistence?

Lex Fridman (02:35.540)

What comes after your physical death?

Lex Fridman (02:37.520)

And that's the more interesting question.

Lex Fridman (02:40.520)

No, I should start by saying from the start,

John Danaher (02:47.280)

I'm a materialist.

Lex Fridman (02:48.400)

I don't believe that we have an immortal soul.

John Danaher (02:50.200)

I don't believe there's a life after our physical death.

Lex Fridman (02:53.160)

In this sense, from someone who starts

John Danaher (02:56.240)

from that point of view,

Lex Fridman (02:58.400)

you have to understand that everyone has two deaths.

John Danaher (03:04.800)

We always talk about our death as though there was only one,

Lex Fridman (03:08.040)

but we all have two deaths.

John Danaher (03:09.780)

There was a time before you were born when you were dead.

Lex Fridman (03:18.360)

You weren't afraid of that period of nonexistence.

John Danaher (03:21.660)

You don't even think about it.

Lex Fridman (03:24.060)

So why would you be afraid of your second period

Lex Fridman (03:27.220)

of nonexistence?

Lex Fridman (03:28.420)

You came from nonexistence.

John Danaher (03:30.020)

You're gonna go back into it.

Lex Fridman (03:31.540)

You weren't afraid of the first.

Lex Fridman (03:33.320)

Why are you somehow afraid of the second?

Lex Fridman (03:35.700)

So it doesn't really make sense to me

John Danaher (03:37.900)

as to why people would be afraid of nonexistence.

Lex Fridman (03:40.980)

You dealt with it fine the first time.

John Danaher (03:43.240)

Deal with it the second time.

Lex Fridman (03:44.700)

But your mind didn't exist for the first death.

Lex Fridman (03:47.700)

And it won't exist after you die either.

Lex Fridman (03:50.380)

But it does exist now enough to comprehend

John Danaher (03:53.220)

that there's this thing that you know nothing about

Lex Fridman (03:56.260)

that's coming, which is nonexistence.

John Danaher (03:58.220)

Actually, you do know about it,

Lex Fridman (03:59.380)

because you know what it was like before you were born.

John Danaher (04:01.540)

It was just nothing.

Lex Fridman (04:03.140)

Every time you go to sleep at night,

John Danaher (04:05.260)

you get a sneak preview of death.

Lex Fridman (04:06.860)

It's just this kind of nothing happens.

John Danaher (04:10.860)

You wake up in the morning, you're alive again.

Lex Fridman (04:13.260)

But it's not about the sleeping.

John Danaher (04:15.520)

It's about the falling asleep.

Lex Fridman (04:17.640)

And every night when you fall asleep,

John Danaher (04:20.540)

you assume you're going to wake up.

Lex Fridman (04:22.780)

Here you know you're not waking up.

Lex Fridman (04:25.740)

And the knowledge of that.

Lex Fridman (04:26.580)

But there's a whole step from that

John Danaher (04:28.180)

to the idea of fearing it.

Lex Fridman (04:29.860)

I'm fully aware that there's gonna be a time

John Danaher (04:32.360)

I don't wake up.

Lex Fridman (04:33.460)

But are you gonna be afraid of it?

Lex Fridman (04:34.780)

Is there some mortal terror you have of this?

Lex Fridman (04:36.660)

No, you didn't have it before.

John Danaher (04:38.040)

You don't have it when you sleep.

Lex Fridman (04:40.100)

Going from the fact that you know you won't wake up

John Danaher (04:43.060)

to terror is two different things.

Lex Fridman (04:45.040)

That's an extra step.

Lex Fridman (04:46.460)

And at that point, you're making a choice at that point.

Lex Fridman (04:50.820)

What about what some people in this context

John Danaher (04:54.020)

we might call like the third death,

Lex Fridman (04:55.800)

which is when everybody forgets the entirety

John Danaher (05:01.700)

of consciousness in the universe

Lex Fridman (05:03.220)

forgets that you've ever existed,

John Danaher (05:04.700)

that John Donahue ever existed.

Lex Fridman (05:07.420)

So.

John Danaher (05:08.260)

It's almost like a cosmic death.

Lex Fridman (05:09.900)

It's like everything goes, yeah.

John Danaher (05:12.100)

Not just, I would say it's like knowledge.

Lex Fridman (05:15.580)

The history books forget about who you are

John Danaher (05:17.820)

because the history books.

Lex Fridman (05:19.020)

This is inevitable, by the way.

John Danaher (05:20.300)

We're all very, very small players in a very big game.

Lex Fridman (05:23.860)

And inevitably, we're all going to go at some point.

John Danaher (05:28.780)

Yeah, but doesn't, so you're.

Lex Fridman (05:31.620)

It's disappointing, of course.

Lex Fridman (05:33.180)

But it's not even, it would be arrogance to say

Lex Fridman (05:38.340)

I'm disappointed in the idea that I will disappear.

Lex Fridman (05:40.580)

But there's far greater things than me that will disappear.

Lex Fridman (05:43.160)

I mean, it's crushing to think

John Danaher (05:46.940)

that there's going to come a time

Lex Fridman (05:48.500)

where no one will ever hear Beethoven's symphonies again.

John Danaher (05:51.900)

That the mysteries of the pharaohs will be lost

Lex Fridman (05:54.900)

and no one will even comprehend that they once existed.

John Danaher (05:57.960)

Humanity has come up with so many amazing things

Lex Fridman (06:01.420)

over its existence.

Lex Fridman (06:02.680)

And to think that one day this is just all happening

Lex Fridman (06:06.580)

on a tiny speck in a distant corner of a very small galaxy

Lex Fridman (06:11.280)

and among millions of galaxies,

Lex Fridman (06:13.220)

that this is all for nothing.

John Danaher (06:15.020)

Okay, I can understand.

Lex Fridman (06:16.100)

There's a kind of dread that comes with this.

Lex Fridman (06:20.060)

But there's also a sense in which the moment you're born

Lex Fridman (06:22.780)

and the moment you can think about these things,

John Danaher (06:24.500)

you know this is your inevitable fate.

Lex Fridman (06:26.820)

Is it so inevitable?

Lex Fridman (06:28.020)

So if we look at, we're in Austin

Lex Fridman (06:30.260)

and there's a guy named Elon Musk.

Lex Fridman (06:32.460)

And he's hoping, in fact, that is the drive

Lex Fridman (06:35.160)

behind many of his passions,

John Danaher (06:36.820)

is the human beings becoming a multi planetary species

Lex Fridman (06:40.740)

and expanding out, exploring and colonizing

John Danaher (06:44.180)

the solar system, the galaxy,

Lex Fridman (06:46.660)

and maybe the rest of the universe.

Lex Fridman (06:48.880)

Is that something that fills you with excitement?

Lex Fridman (06:52.180)

As a project, it's very exciting.

John Danaher (06:56.060)

The whole, I mean, we all grew up with science fiction,

Lex Fridman (06:59.780)

the idea of exploration.

John Danaher (07:02.640)

The same way human beings in earlier centuries

Lex Fridman (07:06.500)

were thrilled at the idea of discovering a new world,

John Danaher (07:08.740)

you know, America or some other part of the world

Lex Fridman (07:10.900)

that they sail to and come back.

Lex Fridman (07:13.580)

But now instead of sailing oceans,

Lex Fridman (07:15.260)

you're sailing solar systems and ultimately even further.

Lex Fridman (07:20.460)

So of course that's exciting.

Lex Fridman (07:21.900)

But as far as relieving us from non existence,

John Danaher (07:25.060)

it's just playing a delaying game

Lex Fridman (07:26.940)

because ultimately, even the universe itself,

John Danaher (07:30.060)

if the laws of thermodynamics are correct,

Lex Fridman (07:31.940)

will ultimately die.

John Danaher (07:33.320)

Of course, we might not understand most of the physics

Lex Fridman (07:40.400)

and how the universe functions.

John Danaher (07:42.600)

You said laws of thermodynamics,

Lex Fridman (07:44.120)

but maybe that's just a tiny little fraction

John Danaher (07:47.000)

of what the universe actually is.

Lex Fridman (07:49.080)

Maybe there's multiple dimensions,

John Danaher (07:50.360)

maybe there's multiple universes,

Lex Fridman (07:52.940)

maybe the entirety of this experience.

John Danaher (07:55.520)

You know, there's guys like Donald Hoffman

Lex Fridman (07:57.400)

that think that all of this is just an illusion

John Danaher (07:59.400)

that we don't, like human cognition and perception

Lex Fridman (08:03.720)

constructs a whole, it's like a video game

John Danaher (08:05.600)

that we construct that's very distant

Lex Fridman (08:07.080)

from the actual reality.

Lex Fridman (08:08.600)

And maybe one day we'll understand that reality,

Lex Fridman (08:10.680)

maybe it'll be like the matrix kind of thing.

Lex Fridman (08:12.760)

So there's a lot of different possibilities here.

Lex Fridman (08:15.120)

And there's also a philosopher named Ernest Becker.

John Danaher (08:18.880)

I don't know if you know who that is.

Lex Fridman (08:20.240)

He wrote Denial of Death.

Lex Fridman (08:22.560)

And his idea, he disagrees with you, but he's dead now,

Lex Fridman (08:25.980)

is that he thinks that the terror of death,

John Danaher (08:31.900)

the terror of the knowledge that we're going to die

Lex Fridman (08:35.380)

is within all of us and is in fact the driver

John Danaher (08:38.020)

behind most of the creativity that we do.

Lex Fridman (08:41.460)

Exploring out into the universe,

Lex Fridman (08:43.580)

but also you becoming one of the great scholars

Lex Fridman (08:47.820)

of the martial arts, the philosophers of fighting

John Danaher (08:52.540)

is because you're actually terrified of death

Lex Fridman (08:55.460)

and you want to somehow permeate your knowledge,

John Danaher (09:00.940)

your ideas, your essence to permeate human civilization

Lex Fridman (09:05.500)

so that even when your body dies, you live on.

John Danaher (09:10.780)

I would agree with him insofar as death

Lex Fridman (09:14.140)

is the single greatest motivator for action.

Lex Fridman (09:18.060)

But going beyond that and saying it's somehow terrifying,

Lex Fridman (09:22.100)

that's an extra step on his part.

Lex Fridman (09:24.180)

And not everyone's going to follow him on that step.

Lex Fridman (09:27.540)

I do believe that death is the single most important element

John Danaher (09:34.060)

in life that gives value to our days.

Lex Fridman (09:37.280)

If you think, for example, of a situation

John Danaher (09:40.900)

where a God came to you and gave you immortality,

Lex Fridman (09:46.380)

life would be very, very different for you.

John Danaher (09:49.360)

You're a talented research scientist, you work to a schedule.

Lex Fridman (09:55.900)

Why?

John Danaher (09:56.740)

Because ultimately you know your life is finite

Lex Fridman (09:59.260)

and actually very finite.

Lex Fridman (10:02.560)

And could be even more so if fate plays its hand

Lex Fridman (10:05.800)

and you die an early death or what have you.

John Danaher (10:08.960)

We never know what's going to happen tomorrow.

Lex Fridman (10:13.160)

As such, we get work done as soon as we can.

John Danaher (10:18.160)

The moment you gain immortality,

Lex Fridman (10:21.320)

you can always put every project off.

John Danaher (10:23.920)

You can always say, I don't need to do this today

Lex Fridman (10:25.920)

because I can do it four centuries from now.

Lex Fridman (10:30.080)

And as you extend artificially a human life,

Lex Fridman (10:33.320)

the motivation to get things done here and now

Lex Fridman (10:36.080)

and work industriously and excel fades away

Lex Fridman (10:40.300)

because you can always come back to the idea

John Danaher (10:42.700)

that you can do this in the future.

Lex Fridman (10:45.080)

And so what gives value to our days is ultimately death.

Lex Fridman (10:49.920)

And value, it's not the only reason behind value,

Lex Fridman (10:55.440)

but a huge part of what we consider value is scarcity.

Lex Fridman (10:59.480)

And death gives us scarcity of days

Lex Fridman (11:02.080)

and is probably the single greatest motivator

John Danaher (11:04.620)

for almost every action we partake in.

Lex Fridman (11:08.200)

It's kind of tragic and beautiful

John Danaher (11:10.240)

that what makes things amazing is that they end.

Lex Fridman (11:19.060)

Yeah, I think it would actually be a terrible burden

John Danaher (11:22.480)

to be immortal.

Lex Fridman (11:27.220)

Life would be in many ways very hollow and meaningless,

John Danaher (11:29.820)

I think.

Lex Fridman (11:30.860)

People talk about death taking away the meaning of life,

Lex Fridman (11:34.140)

but I think immortality would have a very similar effect

Lex Fridman (11:37.440)

in a different direction.

Lex Fridman (11:42.160)

So given this short life, we can think about jujitsu,

Lex Fridman (11:48.400)

we can think about any kind of pursuit.

Lex Fridman (11:51.360)

What do you think makes a great life?

Lex Fridman (11:54.400)

Is it the highest peak of achievement?

John Danaher (12:00.240)

You know, you think about like an Olympic gold medal,

Lex Fridman (12:03.160)

the highest level of performance,

John Danaher (12:05.200)

or is it the longevity of performance,

Lex Fridman (12:08.560)

of doing many amazing things and doing it for a long time?

John Danaher (12:12.220)

I think the latter is kind of what we talk about

Lex Fridman (12:15.380)

in at least American society.

John Danaher (12:18.200)

You know, we want people to be healthy, balanced,

Lex Fridman (12:22.620)

perform well for a long time.

Lex Fridman (12:25.360)

And then there's maybe like the gladiator ethic,

Lex Fridman (12:30.440)

which is the highest peak is what defines.

John Danaher (12:33.800)

You asked an initial question,

Lex Fridman (12:35.440)

which what makes a great life,

Lex Fridman (12:37.600)

but then pointed towards two options,

Lex Fridman (12:40.600)

one of longevity versus degree of difficulty.

John Danaher (12:43.680)

There's gotta be a lot more than that, surely.

Lex Fridman (12:47.840)

I mean, think about, first of all,

John Danaher (12:50.960)

we have to understand from the start

Lex Fridman (12:52.360)

that there's never gonna be an agreed upon set of criteria

John Danaher (12:55.080)

for this is a great life from all perspective.

Lex Fridman (12:58.680)

If you look from the perspective of, say, Machiavelli,

John Danaher (13:01.720)

then Stalin lived a great life.

Lex Fridman (13:04.800)

He was highly successful at what he did.

John Danaher (13:07.000)

He started from nothing.

Lex Fridman (13:08.400)

So the degree of difficulty in what he did

John Danaher (13:10.480)

was extraordinarily high.

Lex Fridman (13:12.400)

He had massive impact upon world history.

John Danaher (13:15.800)

He oversaw the defeat of almost all of his major enemies.

Lex Fridman (13:20.240)

He lived to old age and died of natural causes.

Lex Fridman (13:23.640)

So from Machiavelli's point of view, he had a great life.

Lex Fridman (13:26.920)

If you ask the Ukrainian farmer in the 1930s

John Danaher (13:30.000)

whether he lived a great life,

Lex Fridman (13:31.080)

you get a very different answer.

Lex Fridman (13:33.600)

So everything's gonna come

Lex Fridman (13:34.600)

from what perspective you begin with this.

John Danaher (13:37.760)

You're going to look out at the world

Lex Fridman (13:39.080)

with a given point of view,

Lex Fridman (13:40.080)

and you're gonna make your judgments.

Lex Fridman (13:41.240)

Was this a great life or was this a terrible life?

John Danaher (13:45.960)

Going back to your point, you were actually,

Lex Fridman (13:48.460)

I think, focusing the question on more

John Danaher (13:51.880)

in terms of great single performances

Lex Fridman (13:55.640)

versus longevity of performances.

John Danaher (13:58.520)

Presumably, this isn't really a question

Lex Fridman (14:00.420)

about what makes a great life, then,

John Danaher (14:03.400)

because there's so much more than that to a great life.

Lex Fridman (14:06.920)

I don't know.

John Danaher (14:07.760)

I'm gonna push back on that.

Lex Fridman (14:08.840)

So I think the parallels are very much closer

John Danaher (14:11.440)

than you're making them seem.

Lex Fridman (14:13.080)

I think, let's compare Stalin.

John Danaher (14:14.920)

Stalin is an example of somebody who held power,

Lex Fridman (14:18.420)

considered by many to be one of the most powerful men ever.

John Danaher (14:22.080)

He held power for 30 years.

Lex Fridman (14:24.120)

So that's what I'm referring to, longevity.

Lex Fridman (14:26.080)

And then there's a few people,

Lex Fridman (14:27.880)

I wish my knowledge of history was better,

Lex Fridman (14:31.120)

but people who fought a few great battles,

Lex Fridman (14:34.860)

and they did not maintain power, but they were.

John Danaher (14:37.840)

Let's contrast, say, for example, Alexander the Great,

Lex Fridman (14:40.680)

who died at 33 from probably unnatural causes,

John Danaher (14:48.440)

had around four to five truly defining battles in his life,

Lex Fridman (14:53.440)

which responsible for the lion's share of his achievements,

Lex Fridman (15:00.400)

and burned very bright, but didn't burn long.

Lex Fridman (15:04.520)

Stalin, on the other hand, started from nothing,

Lex Fridman (15:07.360)

and quietly, methodically worked his way

Lex Fridman (15:09.560)

through the revolutionary phase,

Lex Fridman (15:10.940)

and gained increasing amounts of power,

Lex Fridman (15:14.400)

and as he said, went all the way to the end of his career.

John Danaher (15:21.340)

Yeah, there's definitely something to be said

Lex Fridman (15:23.120)

for longevity, but as to which one is greater than the other,

John Danaher (15:29.880)

you can't give a definition, or a set of criteria,

Lex Fridman (15:36.520)

which will definitively say this is better than that.

Lex Fridman (15:39.560)

But when you look...

Lex Fridman (15:40.400)

Ultimately, we look at Alexander as great,

Lex Fridman (15:42.000)

but in a different way, and we look at Stalin.

Lex Fridman (15:44.320)

I didn't think many people would say

John Danaher (15:45.200)

Stalin was a great person,

Lex Fridman (15:46.220)

but from the Machiavellian point of view,

John Danaher (15:49.040)

you would say he was great also.

Lex Fridman (15:53.360)

But when you think about beautiful creations

John Danaher (15:56.360)

done by human beings in the space of, say,

Lex Fridman (15:59.880)

martial arts, in the space of sport,

Lex Fridman (16:03.220)

what inspires you, the peak of performance?

Lex Fridman (16:06.900)

I see where you're coming from.

John Danaher (16:08.480)

It's a great question.

Lex Fridman (16:10.160)

For me, it always comes down to degree of difficulty,

Lex Fridman (16:13.960)

but things are difficult in different ways, okay?

Lex Fridman (16:17.320)

A single, flawless performance in youth

John Danaher (16:22.700)

is still that wins a gold medal.

Lex Fridman (16:25.280)

Let's say, for example, Nadia Comaneci

John Danaher (16:28.320)

won the Olympic gold medal in gymnastics,

Lex Fridman (16:31.240)

the first person ever to get a perfect score.

John Danaher (16:34.160)

If she had disappeared after that,

Lex Fridman (16:36.440)

we would still remember that as an incredible moment.

Lex Fridman (16:39.120)

And the degree of difficulty to get a perfect score

Lex Fridman (16:42.320)

in Olympic gymnastics is just off the charts.

Lex Fridman (16:46.000)

And contrast that with someone who went to four Olympics

Lex Fridman (16:50.240)

and got four silver medals.

John Danaher (16:52.040)

I mean, they're both incredible achievements.

Lex Fridman (16:53.920)

They're just different.

John Danaher (16:56.000)

The attributes that lead to longevity

Lex Fridman (16:59.380)

typically tend to conflict with the attributes

John Danaher (17:01.780)

that bring a powerful, single performance.

Lex Fridman (17:05.240)

One is all about focus on a particular event.

John Danaher (17:08.560)

The other is on spreading your resources over time.

Lex Fridman (17:13.560)

Both present tremendous difficulties.

John Danaher (17:17.140)

There's no need to say one is better than the other.

Lex Fridman (17:19.460)

There's also just, for me personally,

John Danaher (17:21.700)

the stories of somebody who truly struggled

Lex Fridman (17:26.700)

are the most powerful.

John Danaher (17:29.100)

I know a bunch of people don't necessarily agree,

Lex Fridman (17:31.420)

because you said perfection.

John Danaher (17:33.620)

Perfection is kind of the antithesis of struggle.

Lex Fridman (17:37.140)

But I look at somebody, okay, my own life,

John Danaher (17:39.500)

somebody I'm a fan, oh, I'm a fan of everybody.

Lex Fridman (17:41.700)

I'm a huge fan of yours.

John Danaher (17:42.840)

I'm trying not to be nervous here.

Lex Fridman (17:44.020)

But somebody I'm a fan of in the judo world

John Danaher (17:47.100)

is Travis Stevens.

Lex Fridman (17:49.060)

He's a remarkable fellow, by the way.

John Danaher (17:50.980)

A remarkable human being.

Lex Fridman (17:52.500)

Insane in the best kinds of ways.

John Danaher (17:54.860)

I think I started judo, I really started martial arts.

Lex Fridman (17:59.000)

I wrestled, if you consider those martial arts.

John Danaher (18:00.940)

That's been in my blood.

Lex Fridman (18:03.500)

I'm Russian, so.

Lex Fridman (18:04.780)

But beyond that, the whole pajama thing we wear, the gi,

Lex Fridman (18:08.800)

I started by watching Travis in 2008 Olympics.

John Danaher (18:12.700)

Was that accidental, or did you know Travis

Lex Fridman (18:15.300)

prior to watching him?

John Danaher (18:16.140)

No, no, no, I just tuned in.

Lex Fridman (18:17.700)

Now, that's an unusual choice.

John Danaher (18:19.380)

It was just random, you just tuned in

Lex Fridman (18:20.900)

and you saw Travis Stevens.

John Danaher (18:22.300)

I tuned in to the Olympics,

Lex Fridman (18:23.820)

and I was wondering what judo is.

Lex Fridman (18:26.160)

And then I started watching.

Lex Fridman (18:30.100)

We're all proud of our countries and so on,

Lex Fridman (18:32.740)

so I started watching.

Lex Fridman (18:33.740)

He was, I think, the only American

John Danaher (18:36.740)

in the Olympics for judo.

Lex Fridman (18:39.920)

Maybe the, so this Kayla Harrison was 2012.

John Danaher (18:44.020)

Rhonda was there too, so I watched Rhonda and Travis.

Lex Fridman (18:47.340)

But obviously, sort of, I was focused on somebody

John Danaher (18:51.500)

who also weighed the same as I did,

Lex Fridman (18:53.060)

so there was a kinda, I think, 81 kilograms.

Lex Fridman (18:57.540)

So there's a connection, but also there's an intensity

Lex Fridman (19:00.300)

to him, like, he would get angry at his own failures

Lex Fridman (19:06.100)

and he would just refuse to quit.

Lex Fridman (19:07.820)

It's that kinda Dan Gable mentality.

John Danaher (19:10.580)

I just, that was inspiring to me, that he's the underdog.

Lex Fridman (19:14.100)

And the way people talk about him, the commentators,

Lex Fridman (19:17.620)

that it was an unlikely person to do well, right?

Lex Fridman (19:21.380)

And I, the FU attitude behind that,

John Danaher (19:25.380)

saying, no, I'm gonna still win gold.

Lex Fridman (19:27.260)

Obviously, he didn't do well in 2008,

Lex Fridman (19:29.260)

but that was somehow inspiring.

Lex Fridman (19:33.380)

And I just remember he pulled me in,

Lex Fridman (19:36.460)

but then I started to see this sport,

Lex Fridman (19:39.500)

I guess you can call it,

John Danaher (19:42.100)

of effortlessly dominating your opponent in throwing.

Lex Fridman (19:48.580)

Because to me, wrestling was like a grind.

John Danaher (19:52.220)

You kind of control, you slowly just break your opponent.

Lex Fridman (19:56.900)

The idea that you could, with like a foot sweep,

John Danaher (1:00:02.680)

There has to be something more than that.

Lex Fridman (1:00:04.840)

And you have to go from the physical element of skill

John Danaher (1:00:08.280)

into the psychological element of confidence.

Lex Fridman (1:00:11.280)

I can teach you an armbar all day.

John Danaher (1:00:14.680)

You can get to a point where you can flawlessly execute

Lex Fridman (1:00:17.760)

armbars in drilling and even in a certain level

John Danaher (1:00:20.840)

of competition.

Lex Fridman (1:00:22.840)

But if you believe that you can do it,

John Danaher (1:00:25.480)

in a certain level of competition, but if you believe

Lex Fridman (1:00:30.480)

that in attempting an armbar on a dangerous opponent

John Danaher (1:00:34.720)

with good guard passing skills,

Lex Fridman (1:00:36.280)

say the armbar has been performed from guard position,

John Danaher (1:00:40.440)

that if the armbar fails and your opponent uses that failure

Lex Fridman (1:00:45.880)

to set up a strong pass and get into a side pin,

John Danaher (1:00:49.400)

possibly into the mount, and you don't have the ability

Lex Fridman (1:00:53.000)

to get out of that side pin or mount,

John Danaher (1:00:55.800)

you won't pull the trigger on the armbar.

Lex Fridman (1:00:58.400)

And so even though you had all the requisite physical skills

John Danaher (1:01:02.480)

to perform the technique, when push came to shove

Lex Fridman (1:01:06.120)

and the critical moment came, you backed down.

John Danaher (1:01:10.720)

You didn't pull the trigger.

Lex Fridman (1:01:13.800)

Building that confidence is the key

John Danaher (1:01:17.720)

to championship performance.

Lex Fridman (1:01:19.880)

And the single best way to do it is to take away

John Danaher (1:01:24.720)

the innate fear that we all have of bad outcomes

Lex Fridman (1:01:29.520)

that makes us naturally risk averse.

John Danaher (1:01:33.320)

When you don't believe you can be pinned,

Lex Fridman (1:01:35.840)

when you don't believe your guard can be passed,

John Danaher (1:01:38.240)

you'll take risks because there's no downside

Lex Fridman (1:01:41.160)

to your actions.

John Danaher (1:01:42.600)

An unpinnable person and an unpassable person

Lex Fridman (1:01:46.120)

doesn't have much to fear in a jiu jitsu match.

John Danaher (1:01:48.760)

You can come out and fire with all guns blazing

Lex Fridman (1:01:51.640)

because then you know at the end of the day,

John Danaher (1:01:53.280)

no one's gonna hold you down,

Lex Fridman (1:01:54.480)

no one's gonna pass you guard.

John Danaher (1:01:56.400)

That's your first two goals in jiu jitsu.

Lex Fridman (1:01:58.840)

They're the most boring goals.

John Danaher (1:02:00.480)

They're not exciting to learn.

Lex Fridman (1:02:01.560)

No one wants to come in and their first thing we're told,

John Danaher (1:02:03.560)

okay, you're gonna practice escapes

Lex Fridman (1:02:04.760)

for the next year of your life.

Lex Fridman (1:02:06.080)

Okay, it's not going, are you kidding me?

Lex Fridman (1:02:08.240)

But that's what you gotta have, that's your first skill.

Lex Fridman (1:02:11.360)

And that's what I push upon all of my students.

Lex Fridman (1:02:14.080)

You'll see almost all of them are very, very strong

John Danaher (1:02:17.440)

in escape skills.

Lex Fridman (1:02:18.680)

They know that if things go wrong,

John Danaher (1:02:21.080)

they can always get out.

Lex Fridman (1:02:22.760)

They can always live to fight another day.

Lex Fridman (1:02:26.280)

And that is what gives them the ability

Lex Fridman (1:02:28.320)

to attack without fear.

John Danaher (1:02:31.440)

I think that is so profound and so rare.

Lex Fridman (1:02:35.720)

It's so rare to hear this.

John Danaher (1:02:37.680)

I think it's because it's the most painful thing to do.

Lex Fridman (1:02:41.920)

Always ask yourself,

John Danaher (1:02:43.040)

when you enter a jiu jitsu match,

Lex Fridman (1:02:48.000)

you already know ahead of time,

John Danaher (1:02:52.800)

if you're going to lose, how you're going to lose.

Lex Fridman (1:02:56.680)

Okay, there's only a certain number of realistic submissions

John Danaher (1:02:59.880)

that work in the sport of jiu jitsu.

Lex Fridman (1:03:01.040)

The number is very small.

Lex Fridman (1:03:03.240)

So ahead of time, you already know

Lex Fridman (1:03:06.480)

the most likely methods of submission loss in jiu jitsu

John Danaher (1:03:09.760)

are gonna be things like heel hook,

Lex Fridman (1:03:11.480)

armbar, rear naked strangle, guillotine, et cetera, et cetera.

John Danaher (1:03:14.680)

Just work backwards from that knowledge.

Lex Fridman (1:03:17.440)

So start off learning how to defend all of those things.

John Danaher (1:03:20.520)

You know what the major losing positions are in jiu jitsu.

Lex Fridman (1:03:23.520)

Someone gets mounted on you, rear mount,

John Danaher (1:03:25.280)

side control, knee on belly.

Lex Fridman (1:03:26.640)

Those positions you can only lose from.

Lex Fridman (1:03:28.800)

So work backwards from there,

Lex Fridman (1:03:30.280)

getting out of those positions.

Lex Fridman (1:03:32.040)

And that's how I always start.

Lex Fridman (1:03:33.800)

I always say with my students,

John Danaher (1:03:36.360)

I teach beginners from the ground up

Lex Fridman (1:03:40.240)

and I teach experts backwards.

Lex Fridman (1:03:44.080)

What does that mean?

Lex Fridman (1:03:45.240)

When a young student comes to me with no skills,

John Danaher (1:03:48.080)

they learn from the ground up.

Lex Fridman (1:03:49.480)

They start on their backs, defending pins.

John Danaher (1:03:52.280)

Then they start on their backs working

Lex Fridman (1:03:54.480)

from half guard bottom,

John Danaher (1:03:55.720)

then on their backs working from variations of guard.

Lex Fridman (1:03:58.440)

They don't even get to see top position

John Danaher (1:04:00.320)

until they're strong off their backs.

Lex Fridman (1:04:02.760)

Then they go onto their knees and they start passing,

John Danaher (1:04:07.640)

start standing and passing.

Lex Fridman (1:04:09.520)

And then they work their pins and transitions.

Lex Fridman (1:04:12.120)

And then ultimately they stand up to their feet

Lex Fridman (1:04:14.120)

and they work standing position on their feet.

Lex Fridman (1:04:16.600)

So they work from ground back on the floor

Lex Fridman (1:04:20.680)

to ground knees on the floor,

John Danaher (1:04:22.560)

ground standing and then both athletes standing.

Lex Fridman (1:04:24.560)

It's a gradual progression over time

John Danaher (1:04:26.200)

where they work from the bottom to the top.

Lex Fridman (1:04:28.840)

With regards to experts, I teach them end game first.

John Danaher (1:04:32.760)

They must become very, very strong

Lex Fridman (1:04:34.320)

in what finishes the match, which is submission holds.

John Danaher (1:04:37.440)

Okay, in chess, we always talk about end game.

Lex Fridman (1:04:42.960)

I do the same thing in Jiu Jitsu.

John Danaher (1:04:44.600)

I start experts just looking at the mechanics

Lex Fridman (1:04:48.360)

of breaking people and all the submission holds that I teach.

John Danaher (1:04:51.280)

You should know that I teach only

Lex Fridman (1:04:53.000)

a very small number of submission holds, around six.

John Danaher (1:04:57.960)

It's interesting that my students have by far and away

Lex Fridman (1:05:00.760)

the highest submission rate in contemporary Jiu Jitsu,

Lex Fridman (1:05:03.640)

but they only learn around six to seven submission holds.

Lex Fridman (1:05:06.680)

I start them with mechanics where they learn the end game,

Lex Fridman (1:05:13.960)

how to break someone.

Lex Fridman (1:05:19.880)

Once they develop in their mind,

John Danaher (1:05:24.600)

the belief that if, the conditional if,

Lex Fridman (1:05:29.600)

they can get to one of those six positions,

John Danaher (1:05:32.040)

there's a very high likelihood they'll win.

Lex Fridman (1:05:37.520)

If they truly believe then, when it's competition time,

John Danaher (1:05:42.560)

they'll fucking find a way to get to those positions.

Lex Fridman (1:05:46.200)

That's confidence.

Lex Fridman (1:05:47.800)

But if you don't believe, let's say you believe,

Lex Fridman (1:05:50.360)

man, if I get to a finishing position,

John Danaher (1:05:52.000)

an armbar or a strangle,

Lex Fridman (1:05:53.960)

there's only like a 20% chance I'll finish with it.

Lex Fridman (1:05:56.160)

How hard are you gonna fight to get to that position?

Lex Fridman (1:05:58.800)

You're not.

Lex Fridman (1:06:00.080)

Why, why would you?

Lex Fridman (1:06:02.240)

But if you believe there's a 98% chance,

John Danaher (1:06:05.920)

if you get to that position, you'll finish.

Lex Fridman (1:06:08.160)

You'll find a way to get there.

John Danaher (1:06:10.760)

That is so powerful.

Lex Fridman (1:06:12.080)

There's certain things,

John Danaher (1:06:13.480)

it may be going back to Judo a little bit,

Lex Fridman (1:06:15.160)

is there's a clock choke for people who are listening.

John Danaher (1:06:20.280)

It's with the gi when a person is in a turtle position,

Lex Fridman (1:06:25.440)

in a crouching position.

Lex Fridman (1:06:27.320)

And this is something that's done in Judo quite a bit.

Lex Fridman (1:06:30.240)

But I have, it doesn't matter what the technique is,

John Danaher (1:06:32.520)

I have a belief in my head

Lex Fridman (1:06:35.240)

that there's not a person in the world

John Danaher (1:06:37.560)

that I can't choke with that clock choke.

Lex Fridman (1:06:40.440)

That's a good belief to have.

Lex Fridman (1:06:41.560)

And I've done that.

Lex Fridman (1:06:43.480)

And that it was, it built on itself.

John Danaher (1:06:47.920)

The belief made the technique better and better and better.

Lex Fridman (1:06:52.280)

Now you're onto something.

John Danaher (1:06:54.160)

That's exactly the mindset that I'm trying to coach.

Lex Fridman (1:06:56.720)

But that's step one.

John Danaher (1:06:59.360)

You have to believe that once you get there.

Lex Fridman (1:07:01.200)

But you gotta start somewhere.

Lex Fridman (1:07:02.680)

And then it's step one.

Lex Fridman (1:07:03.840)

But then you have to create a system

Lex Fridman (1:07:05.040)

how to get there. But it's a damn important step.

Lex Fridman (1:07:06.920)

So you coach the end game first,

Lex Fridman (1:07:08.960)

and then you fill in the details afterwards.

Lex Fridman (1:07:11.640)

Yeah, that's a huge confidence builder.

Lex Fridman (1:07:13.280)

But I just, I have to say, to admit,

Lex Fridman (1:07:17.920)

and it makes me sad, but I think I'm not alone.

John Danaher (1:07:19.920)

I think a majority of Jiu Jitsu people are like this,

Lex Fridman (1:07:23.080)

that I didn't do the beginner step that you talk about,

John Danaher (1:07:27.880)

which is focusing on escapes.

Lex Fridman (1:07:30.760)

I think I learned the wrong lessons from losing.

John Danaher (1:07:35.720)

I remember in a blue belt competition long ago,

Lex Fridman (1:07:42.520)

I was, I think it was, yeah,

John Danaher (1:07:44.520)

it was the finals of Atlanta IBJJF tournament.

Lex Fridman (1:07:47.680)

And there's a person that passed my guard and he took mount.

Lex Fridman (1:07:57.080)

And he stayed in mount for a long time.

Lex Fridman (1:08:01.160)

And I couldn't breathe.

Lex Fridman (1:08:02.760)

And it was like one of those things

Lex Fridman (1:08:04.440)

where I was truly dominated.

John Danaher (1:08:06.440)

I don't think I've been dominated in Jiu Jitsu match

Lex Fridman (1:08:09.040)

quite like that before or after.

Lex Fridman (1:08:12.560)

And the lesson I learned from that is I'm not gonna let,

Lex Fridman (1:08:15.960)

like as opposed to working on escapes,

John Danaher (1:08:20.120)

I'm not gonna let anyone pass my guard.

Lex Fridman (1:08:22.240)

What you learned is don't take risks.

John Danaher (1:08:24.480)

Don't take risks.

Lex Fridman (1:08:26.480)

Which is ultimately what kills you.

John Danaher (1:08:29.640)

Ultimately, if you become the best you can,

Lex Fridman (1:08:31.360)

you gotta take risks.

John Danaher (1:08:32.400)

As they say, nothing risk, nothing gain.

Lex Fridman (1:08:35.360)

Failure usually makes us even more risk averse

John Danaher (1:08:38.400)

than we started.

Lex Fridman (1:08:39.240)

We're already mentally biased,

John Danaher (1:08:41.320)

being human beings in that direction.

Lex Fridman (1:08:43.360)

And failure tends to reinforce that.

John Danaher (1:08:48.520)

I work hard in my training programs

Lex Fridman (1:08:50.240)

to try and correct that fault.

John Danaher (1:08:52.560)

Is it still possible for a person who's a black belt

Lex Fridman (1:08:56.240)

to then just go back to that beginning journey, I guess?

John Danaher (1:08:59.000)

Of course.

Lex Fridman (1:09:01.080)

Let me tell you something.

John Danaher (1:09:03.120)

I'm probably gonna catch a lot of flack for saying this.

Lex Fridman (1:09:05.720)

I have a belief.

John Danaher (1:09:07.840)

I won't say something, I won't call it knowledge

Lex Fridman (1:09:10.000)

because it's not known, but I have a fervent belief.

John Danaher (1:09:14.160)

That human beings in most skill activities,

Lex Fridman (1:09:19.000)

not all skill activities, but I will say combat sports,

John Danaher (1:09:21.920)

for sure, can reinvent themselves in five year periods.

Lex Fridman (1:09:27.160)

Now you might be saying five years?

Lex Fridman (1:09:29.200)

What's magical about five years?

Lex Fridman (1:09:33.840)

Mike Tyson was 13 years old

John Danaher (1:09:36.320)

when he was taken in by custom auto.

Lex Fridman (1:09:38.120)

By the age of 18, he was beating world class boxers

John Danaher (1:09:45.880)

in the gym and had already made a strong name for himself

Lex Fridman (1:09:51.240)

in international boxing.

John Danaher (1:09:52.600)

He was already a known figure.

Lex Fridman (1:09:54.280)

It was five years.

John Danaher (1:10:00.160)

Yasuhiro Yamashita, the judo player, began judo at 13.

Lex Fridman (1:10:05.160)

He placed silver in the All Japans at 17.

John Danaher (1:10:12.040)

I could go on all day with examples of athletes

Lex Fridman (1:10:17.360)

who within a five year timeframe of starting a sport

John Danaher (1:10:22.520)

were competing at world championship level.

Lex Fridman (1:10:25.280)

I'm gonna give you a rough and ready definition

Lex Fridman (1:10:29.080)

of sport mastery, okay?

Lex Fridman (1:10:31.000)

I believe that if you can play a competitive match

John Danaher (1:10:36.800)

against someone ranked in the top 25 in your sport,

Lex Fridman (1:10:42.440)

and it's a serious international sport,

John Danaher (1:10:44.480)

I would call you someone who's mastered that sport.

Lex Fridman (1:10:47.880)

Okay, you're damn good.

John Danaher (1:10:50.720)

If you can go with the number 25 wrestler in the world

Lex Fridman (1:10:54.520)

and give them a hard competitive match in the gym,

John Danaher (1:10:56.720)

you may not win it, but they had a good workout,

Lex Fridman (1:10:59.560)

you know, they had a good workout.

John Danaher (1:11:01.720)

You have shown mastery of wrestling

Lex Fridman (1:11:07.520)

or indeed any other combat sport you care to name.

John Danaher (1:11:13.160)

There are numerous examples of people doing far better

Lex Fridman (1:11:16.680)

than that in five years, winning medals

John Danaher (1:11:21.680)

at world championships and even Olympic games

Lex Fridman (1:11:24.040)

in that five year period.

John Danaher (1:11:26.240)

This is not an unrealistic goal.

Lex Fridman (1:11:28.120)

There is a lot of empirical evidence to show

John Danaher (1:11:30.120)

that people have done this in the past, a lot of it.

Lex Fridman (1:11:34.000)

So if you fully immerse yourself in a sport

John Danaher (1:11:37.360)

with a well worked out, well planned training program,

Lex Fridman (1:11:40.120)

there is a mountain of evidence to show

John Danaher (1:11:41.840)

that in a five year period,

Lex Fridman (1:11:43.360)

you can go from a complete beginner

John Danaher (1:11:47.800)

to like very, very impressive skill level

Lex Fridman (1:11:53.160)

to the point where you're competitive

John Danaher (1:11:54.320)

with some of the best people on the planet.

Lex Fridman (1:11:56.360)

You can reinvent yourself in these five year periods.

Lex Fridman (1:12:00.440)

What happens with most people is they get to a certain level

Lex Fridman (1:12:03.000)

and they get complacent, they get lazy

Lex Fridman (1:12:05.280)

and they just keep doing the same old thing

Lex Fridman (1:12:07.080)

they've been doing.

Lex Fridman (1:12:08.360)

But if you're diligent and you're purposeful,

Lex Fridman (1:12:11.520)

five years, you can accomplish an awful lot

Lex Fridman (1:12:14.600)

and as I said, there's a mountain of evidence to show it.

Lex Fridman (1:12:18.000)

By the way, as a small aside,

John Danaher (1:12:20.560)

somebody who's mentioned Tversky and Yamashita

Lex Fridman (1:12:22.840)

in the same conversation,

John Danaher (1:12:24.040)

you're one of the most impressive people I've ever spoken to.

Lex Fridman (1:12:27.120)

But as a small aside,

Lex Fridman (1:12:31.160)

so if there's this complete beginner,

Lex Fridman (1:12:33.760)

this is really interesting.

John Danaher (1:12:36.800)

There is empirical evidence

Lex Fridman (1:12:39.120)

that you can achieve incredible things

John Danaher (1:12:41.200)

in a short amount of time.

Lex Fridman (1:12:44.800)

There's a complete beginner standing before you

Lex Fridman (1:12:47.880)

and that beginner has fire in their eyes

Lex Fridman (1:12:50.480)

and they want to achieve mastery.

John Danaher (1:12:54.680)

Where do you place most of the credit

Lex Fridman (1:12:58.240)

for a journey that does achieve mastery?

Lex Fridman (1:13:01.520)

Is it the set of ideas they have in their mind?

Lex Fridman (1:13:04.720)

Is it the set of drills or the way they practice?

Lex Fridman (1:13:09.360)

Is it genetics and luck?

Lex Fridman (1:13:13.280)

Those are all good insights.

John Danaher (1:13:15.040)

All of those factors you've mentioned play a definite role.

Lex Fridman (1:13:18.040)

Let's start with luck, okay?

John Danaher (1:13:21.520)

We are all subject to fortune

Lex Fridman (1:13:24.960)

and fortune can be good and fortune can be bad.

John Danaher (1:13:28.600)

Life is in many ways beautiful, but life is also tragic.

Lex Fridman (1:13:32.120)

And I've had students who showed enormous promise

Lex Fridman (1:13:36.360)

and just tragic events occurred in their lives.

Lex Fridman (1:13:41.280)

The vicissitudes of fortune can be

John Danaher (1:13:44.840)

a wonderful thing in your life

Lex Fridman (1:13:46.120)

and they can be a terrible tragedy.

John Danaher (1:13:48.760)

I've had students who died for various reasons

Lex Fridman (1:13:53.360)

who could have gone on to become world champions.

John Danaher (1:13:56.520)

I've had students who on a much lighter note

Lex Fridman (1:13:59.360)

just fell in love and just wanted to have kids

Lex Fridman (1:14:03.120)

and move away and that's a wonderful thing,

Lex Fridman (1:14:06.680)

but different direction.

John Danaher (1:14:09.800)

You just never know.

Lex Fridman (1:14:10.960)

So luck does play some role.

John Danaher (1:14:13.520)

Even things like where you're born, the location of,

Lex Fridman (1:14:17.960)

your physical location in the world

John Danaher (1:14:20.760)

or even the socioeconomic location can play a role

Lex Fridman (1:14:24.320)

which could be detrimental or favorable.

Lex Fridman (1:14:26.800)

So yeah, luck does play some role.

Lex Fridman (1:14:28.720)

Thankfully, it's one of the smaller elements.

Lex Fridman (1:14:31.760)

And I do believe that a truly resourceful mind

Lex Fridman (1:14:36.320)

can overcome the majority of what fortune throws at us

Lex Fridman (1:14:41.040)

and get to goals provided you're sufficiently

Lex Fridman (1:14:44.120)

mentally robust.

John Danaher (1:14:47.400)

Other things you mentioned, genetics.

Lex Fridman (1:14:51.840)

I do believe in certain sports,

John Danaher (1:14:53.880)

genetics really do play a powerful, powerful role.

Lex Fridman (1:14:58.480)

For example, in any sport where power output

Lex Fridman (1:15:02.800)

and reaction speed, ability to take physical damage,

Lex Fridman (1:15:07.720)

then there are genetic elements which will help.

John Danaher (1:15:11.160)

For example, I couldn't imagine a world

Lex Fridman (1:15:15.360)

in which even if I have a crippled leg,

Lex Fridman (1:15:17.440)

so even if I grew up in a world where my leg was normal

Lex Fridman (1:15:22.080)

and I had normal legs and everything was fine with my body,

John Danaher (1:15:25.200)

I don't believe that I could win the Olympic gold medal

Lex Fridman (1:15:30.400)

in 100 meter sprinting, for example.

John Danaher (1:15:32.320)

I just don't have enough fast twitch muscle fibers.

Lex Fridman (1:15:35.640)

But the more a sport involves skill and tactics,

John Danaher (1:15:40.920)

the less you will see genetics playing a role.

Lex Fridman (1:15:44.840)

If you look at the medal podiums in jiu jitsu, for example,

John Danaher (1:15:49.320)

you will see that no one body type

Lex Fridman (1:15:52.280)

is definitively superior to another.

John Danaher (1:15:54.840)

You will see every variation of body type

Lex Fridman (1:15:57.360)

and the medal platforms in jiu jitsu.

John Danaher (1:16:01.040)

As skill and tactics become more and more important

Lex Fridman (1:16:03.960)

and things like just power output over time

John Danaher (1:16:06.200)

become less and less important,

Lex Fridman (1:16:08.040)

then you will see that genetics play

John Danaher (1:16:11.640)

less and less of a role.

Lex Fridman (1:16:12.800)

I'm happy to say that the sport of jiu jitsu,

John Danaher (1:16:15.520)

the evidence seems pretty clear

Lex Fridman (1:16:17.160)

that there's no one dominant body type

John Danaher (1:16:19.040)

in the sport of jiu jitsu.

Lex Fridman (1:16:19.880)

Rather, there's just advantages for one type

Lex Fridman (1:16:22.840)

and there's advantages for another.

Lex Fridman (1:16:24.360)

You just have to learn to tailor your game to your body.

John Danaher (1:16:30.680)

With regards to training program,

Lex Fridman (1:16:32.600)

yes, I believe with all my heart and all my soul

John Danaher (1:16:36.640)

that your training program does make a difference.

Lex Fridman (1:16:40.120)

I've dedicated my life to that.

John Danaher (1:16:41.480)

Obviously, I'm biased in this regard.

Lex Fridman (1:16:44.840)

I do believe that all of the students that I taught

John Danaher (1:16:47.680)

who became world champions would have been great athletes

Lex Fridman (1:16:50.080)

whether or not they had met me or not.

John Danaher (1:16:51.760)

I believe that.

Lex Fridman (1:16:53.880)

But I do also believe it would have taken them a lot longer

Lex Fridman (1:16:56.920)

and they may not have gotten to the level that they did.

Lex Fridman (1:17:00.000)

I'm sure they would have been impressive,

Lex Fridman (1:17:01.800)

but I do believe that the nature of a training program

Lex Fridman (1:17:06.040)

plays an enormous difference.

John Danaher (1:17:08.200)

I don't mean to say this in an arrogant way.

Lex Fridman (1:17:10.880)

I believe that there's, again,

John Danaher (1:17:13.280)

a mountain of evidence to suggest this is true

Lex Fridman (1:17:15.640)

because you see it in many different sports.

John Danaher (1:17:17.840)

Let's talk, for example, about your country, Russia,

Lex Fridman (1:17:21.680)

and its wrestling program.

John Danaher (1:17:25.760)

Russia is an enormous country,

Lex Fridman (1:17:28.680)

but the location where Russia's wrestling program comes from

John Danaher (1:17:32.840)

is actually very small

Lex Fridman (1:17:34.120)

and the population is actually very small.

John Danaher (1:17:36.800)

I can't verify this, but I was told once,

Lex Fridman (1:17:39.760)

I can't verify this, but the number of people

John Danaher (1:17:41.720)

who wrestle in Russia is actually significantly smaller

Lex Fridman (1:17:44.920)

than the number of people who wrestle in the United States.

John Danaher (1:17:47.800)

It's also not part of the school athletics

Lex Fridman (1:17:51.480)

and it is in the United States.

John Danaher (1:17:52.880)

Yes, that's a different point.

Lex Fridman (1:17:54.600)

We'll come back right to that

John Danaher (1:17:55.800)

because that's also an important point.

Lex Fridman (1:17:57.720)

But if you look at the actual numbers of people there,

John Danaher (1:18:00.280)

they're actually pretty small.

Lex Fridman (1:18:02.040)

So ostensibly, if it comes down to a numbers game,

John Danaher (1:18:04.640)

America should dominate at the Olympics

Lex Fridman (1:18:06.360)

because we have more wrestlers.

John Danaher (1:18:07.800)

Now, the story gets more complicated

Lex Fridman (1:18:09.840)

because America has a different style of wrestling,

John Danaher (1:18:12.240)

the collegiate style than the international freestyle.

Lex Fridman (1:18:14.440)

That is a complicating factor.

Lex Fridman (1:18:18.720)

But nonetheless, what you see there

Lex Fridman (1:18:21.760)

is that numbers aren't everything.

John Danaher (1:18:24.240)

Rather, the manner in which people are trained

Lex Fridman (1:18:27.680)

clearly has an impact.

Lex Fridman (1:18:29.480)

And we know very little about the,

Lex Fridman (1:18:32.800)

there's very little reliable information

John Danaher (1:18:34.560)

about the training program for wrestling

Lex Fridman (1:18:36.360)

in the Russian States.

Lex Fridman (1:18:39.320)

But one thing is incontestable is the amount of success

Lex Fridman (1:18:43.120)

that they've had in international world championship

Lex Fridman (1:18:45.920)

and Olympic competition.

Lex Fridman (1:18:48.600)

They are disproportionately successful

John Danaher (1:18:52.160)

despite their relatively small numbers.

Lex Fridman (1:18:54.760)

There's nothing genetically special about them.

John Danaher (1:18:57.920)

You can talk about performance enhancing drugs,

Lex Fridman (1:19:01.120)

but those are a worldwide phenomenon.

John Danaher (1:19:03.440)

They don't have any access to technology

Lex Fridman (1:19:05.080)

that the rest of the world doesn't have.

John Danaher (1:19:10.080)

At some point, you gotta start asking,

Lex Fridman (1:19:11.880)

what are they doing differently in the training room?

Lex Fridman (1:19:14.440)

And there are many other examples of similar situations.

Lex Fridman (1:19:19.440)

My country, New Zealand, has an insanely successful

John Danaher (1:19:26.240)

rugby program, the sport of rugby,

Lex Fridman (1:19:28.920)

which they have dominated for literally generations

John Danaher (1:19:34.120)

despite the fact that our population is very, very small

Lex Fridman (1:19:38.040)

compared with the rest of the country.

Lex Fridman (1:19:39.240)

And we don't excel in many other sports.

Lex Fridman (1:19:41.760)

New Zealand does fairly well in sports overall,

Lex Fridman (1:19:45.280)

but nothing like they do in rugby.

Lex Fridman (1:19:47.320)

And you've got to ask yourself, is there a culture there

Lex Fridman (1:19:50.320)

which built this up?

Lex Fridman (1:19:52.160)

And the world is full of examples of seemingly small

Lex Fridman (1:19:57.160)

and unpromising areas or locations

Lex Fridman (1:19:59.960)

putting out disproportionately high numbers

John Danaher (1:20:02.800)

of successful athletes.

Lex Fridman (1:20:05.120)

And that points to the idea that different training programs

John Danaher (1:20:10.280)

have different success rates.

Lex Fridman (1:20:12.320)

And so I truly believe with all my heart and all my soul

John Danaher (1:20:15.720)

that how you train does make a significant difference.

Lex Fridman (1:20:20.360)

I would even go further and say

John Danaher (1:20:21.680)

it makes the most difference.

Lex Fridman (1:20:23.120)

Is it the only thing?

John Danaher (1:20:24.240)

Absolutely not.

Lex Fridman (1:20:25.080)

We've already talked about fortune.

John Danaher (1:20:26.360)

We've talked about genetics.

Lex Fridman (1:20:29.080)

If you wanna get nasty, you can even talk about things

John Danaher (1:20:30.880)

like performance enhancing drugs

Lex Fridman (1:20:32.080)

that obviously plays a role in modern sports.

Lex Fridman (1:20:36.360)

But I do believe that the majority of what creates success

Lex Fridman (1:20:41.360)

is the interaction between the athlete

Lex Fridman (1:20:43.560)

and the training program.

Lex Fridman (1:20:45.280)

Now, the training program is one thing.

John Danaher (1:20:47.200)

I do believe that's the single most important,

Lex Fridman (1:20:49.240)

but right behind it is the athlete themselves.

John Danaher (1:20:54.440)

In my own experience, people talk about athletes

Lex Fridman (1:20:57.880)

that I've trained successfully,

Lex Fridman (1:20:59.040)

but they never talk about athletes

Lex Fridman (1:21:00.360)

that I've trained unsuccessfully.

John Danaher (1:21:03.240)

Always remember that for every champion coach produces,

Lex Fridman (1:21:06.360)

there's always going to be a difference.

John Danaher (1:21:08.080)

Always remember that for every champion a coach produces,

Lex Fridman (1:21:11.360)

there's a hundred people that they coach

John Danaher (1:21:14.320)

that no one ever heard of, and this is completely normal.

Lex Fridman (1:21:20.160)

A coach can never take the lion's share of the credit.

John Danaher (1:21:24.000)

A coach creates possibilities,

Lex Fridman (1:21:27.600)

but it's the athlete who actualizes the possibilities.

Lex Fridman (1:21:31.360)

And so building that rapport and finding the right people

Lex Fridman (1:21:35.880)

to excel in your training program is also a big part of it.

Lex Fridman (1:21:39.360)

What makes the difference between the successful,

Lex Fridman (1:21:42.280)

your successes and your failures as a coach?

John Danaher (1:21:45.920)

A range of reasons.

Lex Fridman (1:21:47.000)

The single most important is persistence.

John Danaher (1:21:52.280)

People will point to all kinds of virtues amongst athletes.

Lex Fridman (1:21:55.320)

This guy's the most courageous.

John Danaher (1:21:56.520)

This guy's the strongest.

Lex Fridman (1:21:58.200)

These are all virtues,

Lex Fridman (1:21:59.960)

but the one indispensable virtue is persistence,

Lex Fridman (1:22:04.960)

the ability just to stay in the game long enough

John Danaher (1:22:07.440)

to get the results you seek.

Lex Fridman (1:22:09.360)

But what does persistence really look like?

John Danaher (1:22:12.640)

If we can just break that apart a little bit.

Lex Fridman (1:22:14.400)

It's actually, this is a great question you're asking

John Danaher (1:22:17.000)

because most people see it

Lex Fridman (1:22:18.680)

as a kind of simplistic doggedness

John Danaher (1:22:22.000)

where you just show up every day.

Lex Fridman (1:22:23.720)

That's not it.

John Danaher (1:22:25.680)

The most important form of persistence

Lex Fridman (1:22:27.720)

is persistence of thinking,

John Danaher (1:22:30.440)

which looks to push you in increasingly efficient,

Lex Fridman (1:22:34.640)

more and more efficient methods of training.

John Danaher (1:22:38.000)

Famously, people talk about the idea

Lex Fridman (1:22:40.200)

that the hardest work of all is hard thinking,

Lex Fridman (1:22:42.680)

and they're absolutely right.

Lex Fridman (1:22:44.440)

Okay, coming into the gym

Lex Fridman (1:22:45.640)

and just doing the same thing for a decade

Lex Fridman (1:22:48.320)

isn't going to make you better.

John Danaher (1:22:50.240)

What's going to make you better

Lex Fridman (1:22:51.720)

is progressive training over time

John Danaher (1:22:53.800)

where you identify clear goals marked out

Lex Fridman (1:22:56.320)

in time increments, three months, six months,

John Danaher (1:22:58.880)

12 months, five years,

Lex Fridman (1:23:00.240)

and build those short term goals

John Danaher (1:23:03.640)

into a program of long term goals,

Lex Fridman (1:23:07.560)

making sure that the training program changes over time

Lex Fridman (1:23:10.240)

so that as your skill level rises,

Lex Fridman (1:23:11.920)

the challenges you face in the gym

John Danaher (1:23:13.600)

become higher and higher.

Lex Fridman (1:23:15.160)

Don't kill them at the start

John Danaher (1:23:16.440)

with challenges that are too hard for them

Lex Fridman (1:23:18.680)

to deal with, they get discouraged and leave.

John Danaher (1:23:20.880)

Build them slowly over time,

Lex Fridman (1:23:22.720)

but make sure they don't just get left in a swamp

John Danaher (1:23:25.240)

where they're just doing the same thing

Lex Fridman (1:23:26.480)

they were doing three years ago and they get bored.

Lex Fridman (1:23:28.240)

And there's two ways you can leave in a gym.

Lex Fridman (1:23:31.320)

You can leave from adversity, it was too tough,

John Danaher (1:23:35.240)

or you can leave from boredom.

Lex Fridman (1:23:37.400)

Everyone talks about the first,

John Danaher (1:23:40.120)

no one talks about the second.

Lex Fridman (1:23:42.680)

Most people, when they get to black belt,

John Danaher (1:23:45.360)

they get bored.

Lex Fridman (1:23:46.800)

They know what their game is,

John Danaher (1:23:47.960)

they know what they're good at,

Lex Fridman (1:23:48.960)

they know what they're not good at.

John Danaher (1:23:50.560)

When they compete, they stick with what they're good at,

Lex Fridman (1:23:52.720)

and they avoid what they're not good at,

Lex Fridman (1:23:54.680)

and they get bored.

Lex Fridman (1:23:56.160)

They reach a plateau, and that's it.

John Danaher (1:23:59.440)

My whole thing is to make sure it's not so tough

Lex Fridman (1:24:02.360)

at the start that they leave because of adversity,

Lex Fridman (1:24:05.160)

and then for the rest of their career

Lex Fridman (1:24:06.400)

to make sure it's not boring

Lex Fridman (1:24:07.680)

so they leave because of boredom.

Lex Fridman (1:24:10.080)

Travis Stevens actually said something

John Danaher (1:24:11.680)

that changed the way I see training.

Lex Fridman (1:24:13.800)

He said it as a side comment,

Lex Fridman (1:24:15.520)

but he said that at the end of a good training session,

Lex Fridman (1:24:19.920)

your mind should be exhausted, not your body.

Lex Fridman (1:24:22.440)

And I've, for most of my life,

Lex Fridman (1:24:27.880)

saw good training sessions where my body was exhausted.

John Danaher (1:24:31.280)

Yes, I believe that's the case with most people.

Lex Fridman (1:24:35.120)

You should come out of the training session

John Danaher (1:24:37.080)

with your mind buzzing with ideas,

Lex Fridman (1:24:39.240)

like possibilities for tomorrow.

Lex Fridman (1:24:41.480)

And by the way, on that note,

Lex Fridman (1:24:42.880)

I would go further and say that the training session

John Danaher (1:24:45.440)

doesn't finish when your body stops moving.

Lex Fridman (1:24:48.640)

It finishes when your mind stops moving,

Lex Fridman (1:24:51.160)

and your mind shouldn't stop moving.

Lex Fridman (1:24:53.160)

After that session, there should be analysis.

Lex Fridman (1:24:55.080)

What did I do well?

Lex Fridman (1:24:55.920)

What did I do badly?

Lex Fridman (1:24:57.240)

How could I do better with the things that I did well?

Lex Fridman (1:25:00.200)

Can I ask you about something that I truly enjoy

Lex Fridman (1:25:03.600)

and I think is really powerful,

Lex Fridman (1:25:05.640)

but most people don't seem to believe in that,

Lex Fridman (1:25:07.600)

but is drilling?

Lex Fridman (1:25:10.440)

I don't know.

John Danaher (1:25:11.520)

Maybe people are different, but I love the idea,

Lex Fridman (1:25:15.360)

maybe even outside of jiu jitsu,

John Danaher (1:25:16.840)

of doing the same thing over and over.

Lex Fridman (1:25:19.400)

It's like Jiro dreams of sushi.

John Danaher (1:25:21.680)

I love doing the thing that nobody wants to do

Lex Fridman (1:25:27.800)

and doing it 10 times, 100 times, 1,000 times

John Danaher (1:25:30.680)

more than what nobody wants to do.

Lex Fridman (1:25:34.200)

So I'm a huge fan of drilling.

John Danaher (1:25:36.840)

Obviously, I'm not a professional athlete,

Lex Fridman (1:25:38.680)

but I feel like if I actually gave myself,

John Danaher (1:25:42.360)

if I wanted to be really good at jiu jitsu,

Lex Fridman (1:25:44.400)

like reach the level of being in the top 25

John Danaher (1:25:47.480)

when I was much younger, like really strive,

Lex Fridman (1:25:52.520)

I think I could achieve it by drilling.

John Danaher (1:25:56.840)

I had this belief untested.

Lex Fridman (1:25:59.080)

Can you challenge this idea or agree with it?

John Danaher (1:26:03.280)

First off, fascinating.

Lex Fridman (1:26:05.360)

However, we're going to have to disagree.

John Danaher (1:26:08.000)

No, no.

Lex Fridman (1:26:09.880)

We're just gonna have to start to understand

Lex Fridman (1:26:13.240)

what are we talking about when we talk about drilling?

Lex Fridman (1:26:15.560)

It's a very vague term.

John Danaher (1:26:17.600)

Okay, at this moment, many of your listeners

Lex Fridman (1:26:22.640)

are probably having the same thought process,

John Danaher (1:26:25.000)

which is, oh, drilling.

Lex Fridman (1:26:26.200)

Yeah, I know what that is.

John Danaher (1:26:27.880)

We go into the gym and we pick a move

Lex Fridman (1:26:30.600)

and we practice it for a certain number of repetitions.

Lex Fridman (1:26:34.360)

And if I do that, I'm gonna get better at the technique.

Lex Fridman (1:26:38.240)

Okay, they're wrong.

John Danaher (1:26:46.240)

We've got to have a much more in depth understanding

Lex Fridman (1:26:53.240)

of what the hell we're talking about

John Danaher (1:26:54.760)

when we talk about drilling.

Lex Fridman (1:26:57.480)

Ultimately, any movement in the gym

John Danaher (1:27:02.480)

that doesn't improve the skills you already have

Lex Fridman (1:27:07.520)

or build new skills is a waste of time,

John Danaher (1:27:11.920)

a waste of resources.

Lex Fridman (1:27:13.160)

Everything you do should be done with the aim

Lex Fridman (1:27:16.120)

and the understanding that this is gonna make me better

Lex Fridman (1:27:18.960)

at the sport I practice.

John Danaher (1:27:20.600)

If it's not, shouldn't be there.

Lex Fridman (1:27:24.160)

The majority of what passes for drilling

John Danaher (1:27:27.320)

in most training halls will not make you better,

Lex Fridman (1:27:32.640)

including some of the most cherished forms of drilling,

John Danaher (1:27:37.280)

which is repetition for numbers.

Lex Fridman (1:27:41.080)

The moment you say to someone,

John Danaher (1:27:42.440)

I want you to do this a hundred times,

Lex Fridman (1:27:45.440)

what are they really thinking about?

John Danaher (1:27:47.920)

Volume.

Lex Fridman (1:27:50.000)

They're saying, okay, I'm at repetition 78.

John Danaher (1:27:53.400)

I'm at 80, 20 more to go.

Lex Fridman (1:27:55.400)

All they're talking, their primary thought process

John Danaher (1:27:58.720)

is on numbers.

Lex Fridman (1:28:00.600)

That's not the point of drilling.

John Danaher (1:28:03.240)

The point is skill acquisition.

Lex Fridman (1:28:06.360)

When people drill, don't get them focused on numbers,

John Danaher (1:28:09.680)

get them focused on mechanics.

Lex Fridman (1:28:12.440)

That's what they have to worry about.

John Danaher (1:28:14.240)

I never have my students drill for numbers ever.

Lex Fridman (1:28:17.800)

Just one, two, three, get the fuck out of here.

Lex Fridman (1:28:20.320)

Are you kidding me?

Lex Fridman (1:28:21.880)

Like how are you gonna get better with that?

John Danaher (1:28:23.600)

Okay, get them working on the sense of gaining knowledge.

Lex Fridman (1:28:28.200)

That's my job.

John Danaher (1:28:30.080)

I have to give them knowledge.

Lex Fridman (1:28:31.640)

I have to explain to them what they're trying to do.

John Danaher (1:28:34.160)

That starts them on the right track.

Lex Fridman (1:28:36.840)

But knowledge is one thing.

John Danaher (1:28:38.960)

Skill is another.

Lex Fridman (1:28:41.280)

If jiu jitsu was just about knowledge,

John Danaher (1:28:44.000)

then all the 60 and 70 year old red belts

Lex Fridman (1:28:48.000)

would be the world champions.

John Danaher (1:28:49.200)

They're not.

Lex Fridman (1:28:50.480)

Jiu jitsu isn't won by knowledge, it's won by skill.

John Danaher (1:28:53.840)

Knowledge is the first step in building skill.

Lex Fridman (1:28:58.160)

So my job as a coach is to transmit knowledge.

John Danaher (1:29:01.960)

Then I have to create training programs

Lex Fridman (1:29:04.680)

with a path from knowledge to polished skill

John Danaher (1:29:09.720)

is carried out.

Lex Fridman (1:29:11.240)

That's the interface between me and my students.

Lex Fridman (1:29:13.760)

And so I give them drills where the whole emphasis

Lex Fridman (1:29:18.760)

is upon getting a sense where they understand

Lex Fridman (1:29:23.680)

what are the problems they're trying to solve

Lex Fridman (1:29:26.520)

and working towards practical solutions.

John Danaher (1:29:30.520)

They never work with numbers.

Lex Fridman (1:29:32.760)

They work with mechanics and feel.

John Danaher (1:29:36.040)

Then you have to bring in the idea of progression.

Lex Fridman (1:29:41.480)

When you drill, there's zero resistance.

John Danaher (1:29:44.800)

When you fight in competition, there's 100% resistance.

Lex Fridman (1:29:48.920)

You can't go from zero to 100.

John Danaher (1:29:52.640)

There has to be progress over time

Lex Fridman (1:29:55.880)

where I have them work in drills

John Danaher (1:29:59.160)

with slightly increasing increments of resistance.

Lex Fridman (1:30:04.200)

And just as we talked about earlier with the weightlifter

John Danaher (1:30:06.640)

who doesn't start with 500 pounds,

Lex Fridman (1:30:08.840)

but who begins with the bar and then over time

John Danaher (1:30:11.960)

builds the skills that one day out there in the future

Lex Fridman (1:30:14.680)

he will lift 500 pounds.

Lex Fridman (1:30:16.720)

So too, that Jujikutami that you're working on today

Lex Fridman (1:30:19.880)

is feeble and pathetic, but five years from now

John Danaher (1:30:22.720)

you'll win a world championship with it.

Lex Fridman (1:30:25.640)

You can't have this naive idea of drilling.

John Danaher (1:30:28.600)

It's something you just come out,

Lex Fridman (1:30:30.320)

you randomly pick a move and you work for numbers

John Danaher (1:30:34.760)

until you've satisfied a certain set of numbers

Lex Fridman (1:30:36.720)

that your coach threw at you

Lex Fridman (1:30:37.720)

and then think you're gonna get better.

Lex Fridman (1:30:39.720)

There's even dangers with drilling.

John Danaher (1:30:45.960)

There is no performance increase that comes

Lex Fridman (1:30:52.560)

once you get to a certain level

Lex Fridman (1:30:54.440)

and you just keep doing the same damn thing.

Lex Fridman (1:30:58.560)

Let's say, for example, you come out

Lex Fridman (1:31:01.640)

and you hit a hundred repetitions of the arm

Lex Fridman (1:31:04.880)

by Jujikutami from guard position.

Lex Fridman (1:31:06.720)

And you're all proud of yourself

Lex Fridman (1:31:07.840)

because you hit a hundred repetitions

Lex Fridman (1:31:09.120)

and your body's tired and you're telling yourself,

Lex Fridman (1:31:11.040)

man, I got a good workout.

Lex Fridman (1:31:12.880)

And you come in tomorrow, you do exactly the same thing.

Lex Fridman (1:31:16.320)

You come in the day after that and a week goes by

Lex Fridman (1:31:18.400)

and you've done the same thing.

Lex Fridman (1:31:20.960)

Then a year later, you do the same thing.

Lex Fridman (1:31:24.520)

Ask yourself, has your Jujikutami really gotten better?

Lex Fridman (1:31:30.000)

No, you've performed literally thousands

Lex Fridman (1:31:32.480)

and thousands of repetitions.

Lex Fridman (1:31:34.280)

You've spent an enormous amount of training time

Lex Fridman (1:31:38.280)

and energy that could have gone in different directions

Lex Fridman (1:31:40.800)

on something which didn't make you any better.

John Danaher (1:31:45.560)

Drills have diminishing returns.

Lex Fridman (1:31:49.640)

Once you get to a certain skill level,

John Danaher (1:31:51.760)

if you just keep hammering on the same thing

Lex Fridman (1:31:54.800)

in the same fashion for the same amount of time,

John Danaher (1:31:58.840)

you stop getting better.

Lex Fridman (1:32:01.000)

Can I, partially for fun, partially for Dallas Advocate,

Lex Fridman (1:32:04.360)

but partially because I actually believe this

Lex Fridman (1:32:05.840)

to push back on some points, is it possible?

Lex Fridman (1:32:10.240)

So everything you said, I think is beautiful and correct.

Lex Fridman (1:32:13.800)

But the asking yourself the question, am I getting better?

John Danaher (1:32:18.800)

It's a really important one

Lex Fridman (1:32:19.640)

and you could do that in training.

John Danaher (1:32:21.480)

Is there a set of techniques,

Lex Fridman (1:32:24.320)

maybe a small subset of all the techniques

John Danaher (1:32:26.320)

that are in Jiu Jitsu,

Lex Fridman (1:32:27.920)

where you can have significant skill acquisition

John Danaher (1:32:34.120)

if you put in the numbers or the time, whatever,

Lex Fridman (1:32:37.440)

on a technique against an opponent who's not resisting?

John Danaher (1:32:41.680)

Here's, let me elaborate.

Lex Fridman (1:32:43.600)

What I've, in my, maybe I'm different.

John Danaher (1:32:45.600)

You'll probably have to finish an example.

Lex Fridman (1:32:47.200)

Yes.

John Danaher (1:32:49.680)

Let me first make a general statement

Lex Fridman (1:32:51.320)

and then I can give examples.

John Danaher (1:32:53.080)

The general statement is I found that through repetitions,

Lex Fridman (1:32:56.680)

and this is high repetitions combined with training,

Lex Fridman (1:33:00.680)

but high repetitions against a non resisting opponent,

Lex Fridman (1:33:03.920)

I've gotten to understand the way my body moves,

John Danaher (1:33:09.160)

the way I apply pressure on a human.

Lex Fridman (1:33:11.600)

Because it's not actually zero resistance.

John Danaher (1:33:13.320)

The opponent's still laying there.

Lex Fridman (1:33:14.920)

They're still keeping their legs up.

John Danaher (1:33:16.840)

They're still doing, they might not be resisting,

Lex Fridman (1:33:19.400)

but they're still creating a structure.

John Danaher (1:33:21.520)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:33:22.360)

A non dynamic structure.

John Danaher (1:33:23.520)

They're presenting a target.

Lex Fridman (1:33:24.880)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:33:25.720)

But it's not dynamic.

Lex Fridman (1:33:27.920)

So you can't master the timing of things,

Lex Fridman (1:33:31.960)

but you can master the, not master,

Lex Fridman (1:33:34.760)

but I felt like I could gain an understanding

John Danaher (1:33:37.760)

of how to apply pressure to the human body

Lex Fridman (1:33:40.920)

over thousands of repetitions.

John Danaher (1:33:43.160)

Now, for example, I just, just to give you an example

Lex Fridman (1:33:45.360)

to know what we're talking about.

John Danaher (1:33:48.000)

There's a guy named Saulo Herbaro and Shanji Herbaro

Lex Fridman (1:33:52.160)

that have this, I guess, I already forgot,

Lex Fridman (1:33:55.160)

but the headquarters position or something like that.

Lex Fridman (1:33:57.560)

But putting pressure as you pass guard,

John Danaher (1:34:00.960)

like medium passing distance kind of pressure.

Lex Fridman (1:34:04.480)

I've did thousands of repetitions of that

John Danaher (1:34:06.960)

to understand what putting pressure with my hips feels like.

Lex Fridman (1:34:12.280)

To truly understand that movement,

John Danaher (1:34:13.920)

I felt like I was getting much better.

Lex Fridman (1:34:17.560)

It's like, it's hard to put into words,

Lex Fridman (1:34:19.440)

but that skill acquisition is so subtle.

Lex Fridman (1:34:22.680)

Just the way you turn your hips.

Lex Fridman (1:34:25.440)

But you're already talking about

Lex Fridman (1:34:27.160)

a better form of drilling now.

John Danaher (1:34:28.480)

You're going beyond the basic numbers

Lex Fridman (1:34:30.480)

and you're getting the sense of feel and mechanics,

John Danaher (1:34:32.440)

which is what we want in drilling.

Lex Fridman (1:34:33.960)

But the reason I say numbers,

Lex Fridman (1:34:36.080)

and maybe you can speak to this,

Lex Fridman (1:34:37.440)

but this might be an OCD thing,

Lex Fridman (1:34:39.760)

but it allows you to take a journey

Lex Fridman (1:34:43.280)

that doesn't just last a week or two weeks,

Lex Fridman (1:34:46.280)

but a journey where you stay with the technique

Lex Fridman (1:34:48.960)

for two, three years.

Lex Fridman (1:34:50.640)

And there's a dedication to it.

Lex Fridman (1:34:53.760)

Where it's a long term commitment

John Danaher (1:34:57.040)

to where you're forcing yourself,

Lex Fridman (1:34:59.000)

perhaps there's other mechanisms,

Lex Fridman (1:35:00.400)

but you're forcing yourself to stay with a technique

Lex Fridman (1:35:03.280)

longer than most people around you

John Danaher (1:35:05.000)

are staying with whatever they're working on.

Lex Fridman (1:35:07.120)

And you're taking that long journey.

Lex Fridman (1:35:09.120)

And the numbers somehow enforce that persistence

Lex Fridman (1:35:12.360)

and that dedication.

John Danaher (1:35:14.880)

First thing, that journey's a wonderful thing.

Lex Fridman (1:35:18.320)

And if that technique is a crucial part of what you do,

John Danaher (1:35:23.000)

then it's time well invested.

Lex Fridman (1:35:24.760)

But always understand

John Danaher (1:35:25.600)

that it comes at an opportunity cost.

Lex Fridman (1:35:27.560)

That by spending that amount of time on that one technique,

John Danaher (1:35:30.400)

you've sacrificed other things

Lex Fridman (1:35:31.720)

that you could have learned that could have won you matches.

Lex Fridman (1:35:35.000)

So understand that every focus upon one element of the game

Lex Fridman (1:35:40.080)

comes at the opportunity cost of other elements.

John Danaher (1:35:43.240)

Now, as long as you're playing a part of the game

Lex Fridman (1:35:46.640)

where, okay, this is central to what I do.

John Danaher (1:35:48.720)

Yes, okay, that's fine.

Lex Fridman (1:35:50.760)

But just be aware of the danger of opportunity cost.

John Danaher (1:35:53.720)

That's something no one talks about in the training room,

Lex Fridman (1:35:55.480)

but it becomes very important.

John Danaher (1:35:57.560)

Secondly, the other question you have to start

Lex Fridman (1:35:59.080)

asking yourself is, okay,

John Danaher (1:36:01.320)

that training clearly had benefits for you early on.

Lex Fridman (1:36:05.880)

But when the point of diminishing return starts coming

Lex Fridman (1:36:08.640)

and if you feel you're just doing the same thing,

Lex Fridman (1:36:11.120)

then it's time to switch.

John Danaher (1:36:12.320)

Now, if you feel you're still getting benefit from it,

Lex Fridman (1:36:15.360)

by all means, continue.

John Danaher (1:36:17.320)

That will be a call on your part.

Lex Fridman (1:36:18.960)

You've been playing this game a long time now,

Lex Fridman (1:36:21.560)

so I would trust your call on that.

Lex Fridman (1:36:25.400)

But my job as a coach is to look out and say,

John Danaher (1:36:28.600)

okay, this kid's been working

Lex Fridman (1:36:31.120)

cross Ashigarami for six months

Lex Fridman (1:36:34.600)

and I feel he's gotten to a good skill level.

Lex Fridman (1:36:37.240)

If he stays any further on it,

John Danaher (1:36:40.080)

the opportunity cost becomes greater

Lex Fridman (1:36:43.000)

than the expected benefits of continuing it.

Lex Fridman (1:36:45.840)

And that's my job as a coach,

Lex Fridman (1:36:47.040)

is to direct things in that fashion.

John Danaher (1:36:48.520)

If I can do a good job with that,

Lex Fridman (1:36:50.320)

then I can take them to the next level of drilling

Lex Fridman (1:36:52.760)

and start amping it up.

Lex Fridman (1:36:54.360)

And that's how I keep progress over time.

John Danaher (1:36:56.760)

My biggest fear is to have students

Lex Fridman (1:37:00.880)

run past the point of diminishing returns,

John Danaher (1:37:03.560)

staying stagnant where opportunity costs comes in

Lex Fridman (1:37:07.920)

and they're not making the progress they could

John Danaher (1:37:10.600)

in the time that they've been working.

Lex Fridman (1:37:13.240)

I mean, that was,

John Danaher (1:37:14.080)

it was almost a philosophical question for me.

Lex Fridman (1:37:16.320)

That's what I was always on a search on

John Danaher (1:37:18.080)

because I know my mind is likes drilling.

Lex Fridman (1:37:22.520)

I don't like relying on other people for improvement

Lex Fridman (1:37:26.560)

and drilling allows me to do something

Lex Fridman (1:37:30.640)

that is 100% me.

John Danaher (1:37:33.680)

It's interesting Lex,

Lex Fridman (1:37:34.520)

you say you don't like relying on other people in drilling,

Lex Fridman (1:37:36.320)

but in drilling, you really do rely a lot on your partner.

Lex Fridman (1:37:39.280)

One of the first things I do when I coach people

John Danaher (1:37:40.960)

is I teach them how to drill.

Lex Fridman (1:37:43.280)

That's a skill in itself.

Lex Fridman (1:37:44.920)

And drilling is in a sense,

Lex Fridman (1:37:49.520)

the opposite of sparring.

John Danaher (1:37:53.280)

Drilling is a cooperative venture

Lex Fridman (1:37:55.800)

where you work as dance partners,

John Danaher (1:37:58.480)

complimenting each other's movement.

Lex Fridman (1:38:01.240)

If I drill with Gordon Ryan and I want him to work on bars,

John Danaher (1:38:04.280)

I will move my body in ways

Lex Fridman (1:38:05.920)

which make it an interesting exercise for Gordon.

John Danaher (1:38:11.680)

I'm not just sitting there and he does a repetition

Lex Fridman (1:38:15.560)

and I'm, okay, he does 10.

John Danaher (1:38:18.760)

I can't wait for this to be over so I can do my 10

Lex Fridman (1:38:20.880)

and I can't wait for all this to be over

Lex Fridman (1:38:22.240)

so we can just spar and get over all this bullshit.

Lex Fridman (1:38:25.600)

That's the sad truth of most drilling in Jiu Jitsu.

John Danaher (1:38:30.960)

There's a sense in which when good people drill,

Lex Fridman (1:38:33.360)

it's like watching good people dance.

John Danaher (1:38:36.920)

They move in unison and compliment each other's movement

Lex Fridman (1:38:39.800)

and make each other look better.

John Danaher (1:38:42.200)

Sparring, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of that.

Lex Fridman (1:38:44.480)

That's resistance where you're trying to make

John Danaher (1:38:46.160)

the other person look as bad as possible.

Lex Fridman (1:38:48.320)

And once you understand the different directions

John Danaher (1:38:51.080)

in which drilling and sparring go,

Lex Fridman (1:38:52.800)

that's when things start getting interesting.

John Danaher (1:38:54.360)

You start getting fast progress.

Lex Fridman (1:38:56.560)

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

John Danaher (1:38:59.000)

I think I was not very eloquent describing what I mean.

Lex Fridman (1:39:02.240)

I found myself not able to find in Jiu Jitsu

John Danaher (1:39:07.280)

too many people that are willing to dedicate

Lex Fridman (1:39:09.920)

a huge amount of time to a particular technique.

John Danaher (1:39:12.920)

I concur with you on Netflix.

Lex Fridman (1:39:15.000)

Now, answer the interesting question, why?

Lex Fridman (1:39:18.920)

Why can't you get people to drill with you?

Lex Fridman (1:39:21.920)

By the way, if I could just shout out

John Danaher (1:39:24.160)

the people that did drill with me

Lex Fridman (1:39:25.720)

is usually blue belt women because they're smaller,

John Danaher (1:39:30.720)

they don't like training because they get their ass kicked

Lex Fridman (1:39:34.520)

because they're much smaller.

Lex Fridman (1:39:36.080)

So they're willing to invest a significant amount of effort

Lex Fridman (1:39:40.960)

into training.

John Danaher (1:39:44.160)

That's good, but their motivation for doing so is not good.

Lex Fridman (1:39:49.080)

Well, yes.

Lex Fridman (1:39:49.920)

But your motivation for drilling is

Lex Fridman (1:39:51.480)

because you don't want to get your ass kicked.

John Danaher (1:39:52.640)

That's not a good motivation. No black belt ever.

Lex Fridman (1:39:55.400)

I could never find a black belt

John Danaher (1:39:57.040)

that I could drill with like this.

Lex Fridman (1:39:59.400)

Now let's go back to that question, why?

John Danaher (1:40:01.520)

I don't mean this, I am somebody

Lex Fridman (1:40:05.080)

who likes to say nice things about people.

Lex Fridman (1:40:06.920)

So let me answer for you.

Lex Fridman (1:40:08.920)

Yeah.

John Danaher (1:40:09.800)

Two reasons, because they find it boring.

Lex Fridman (1:40:12.520)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:40:13.360)

And secondly, perhaps more importantly,

Lex Fridman (1:40:14.880)

they don't believe it works.

John Danaher (1:40:16.520)

Yeah, those are good answers.

Lex Fridman (1:40:18.320)

And now let's go further

Lex Fridman (1:40:20.080)

and ask the truly interesting question.

Lex Fridman (1:40:22.640)

Why do they believe that?

John Danaher (1:40:23.920)

If I were to answer it in the context of Russian wrestling,

Lex Fridman (1:40:29.640)

where drilling is much bigger part,

John Danaher (1:40:32.480)

is I think culturally that was knowledge

Lex Fridman (1:40:35.560)

that everybody tells each other in Jiu Jitsu

John Danaher (1:40:38.200)

that drilling doesn't work.

Lex Fridman (1:40:44.360)

Because they never taught how to drill.

John Danaher (1:40:47.520)

No one ever sits you down one day and says,

Lex Fridman (1:40:49.040)

okay, this is how you drill.

Lex Fridman (1:40:50.760)

And so the exercise feels futile.

Lex Fridman (1:40:54.240)

They don't feel their skill level is going up.

John Danaher (1:40:55.840)

They don't associate drilling with increased skill level.

Lex Fridman (1:40:59.000)

They associate sparring with increased skill level,

Lex Fridman (1:41:01.680)

but not drilling, which is a tragedy

Lex Fridman (1:41:03.760)

because it is a fantastic way to introduce

Lex Fridman (1:41:08.000)

and expand the repertoire of a developing student.

Lex Fridman (1:41:11.360)

It's an essential part of every workout I teach.

John Danaher (1:41:14.880)

I always say the game of Jiu Jitsu begins with knowledge

Lex Fridman (1:41:17.760)

and builds up to skill.

John Danaher (1:41:20.400)

Who wins is the one who has greater skill

Lex Fridman (1:41:23.120)

and nine times out of 10.

Lex Fridman (1:41:25.920)

So to me, it's a tragedy that what you're saying

Lex Fridman (1:41:28.960)

breaks my heart to hear that you couldn't get a black belt

John Danaher (1:41:31.200)

to drill with you, that's shameful.

Lex Fridman (1:41:34.360)

But I understand, I sympathize with those black belts too

John Danaher (1:41:38.280)

because the way in which most people are told to drill

Lex Fridman (1:41:41.640)

does feel ineffective and it is damn boring.

John Danaher (1:41:44.920)

They'd rather just spar.

Lex Fridman (1:41:46.400)

They feel like they get more out of the workout.

Lex Fridman (1:41:48.480)

And that's, if anything, an indictment

Lex Fridman (1:41:51.760)

upon most of the training programs around the nation.

John Danaher (1:41:54.640)

Would you say that drilling,

Lex Fridman (1:41:56.840)

if you were to build a black belt world champion,

John Danaher (1:42:01.520)

would drilling be, what percent of their training,

Lex Fridman (1:42:05.760)

in the entirety of their career would be drilling?

John Danaher (1:42:08.480)

Great question.

Lex Fridman (1:42:10.360)

Let's first put a proviso on it

John Danaher (1:42:11.840)

that I don't do the same thing for all athletes.

Lex Fridman (1:42:14.160)

Everyone's got a different personality.

Lex Fridman (1:42:16.200)

And like Nicky Rod, I can only hold his attention

Lex Fridman (1:42:19.560)

for two minutes at a time.

Lex Fridman (1:42:20.880)

And Gary Tonin, five minutes.

Lex Fridman (1:42:26.440)

Gordon Ryan, five hours.

John Danaher (1:42:28.320)

Like George St. Pierre, five hours.

Lex Fridman (1:42:31.640)

Travis Stevens, five hours.

John Danaher (1:42:33.040)

They are just laser focused.

Lex Fridman (1:42:35.400)

So everyone's different.

John Danaher (1:42:36.320)

Let's put that down as our first proviso.

Lex Fridman (1:42:40.680)

You probably knew those answers already.

John Danaher (1:42:42.160)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:42:44.320)

That's hilarious.

Lex Fridman (1:42:45.160)

But as a general rule,

Lex Fridman (1:42:49.280)

if I run a two and a half hour class,

John Danaher (1:42:53.760)

you can expect an hour and a half of it to be,

Lex Fridman (1:42:57.640)

I'm going to use the word drilling,

Lex Fridman (1:42:59.160)

but I'm also going to say that this is too complex

Lex Fridman (1:43:01.600)

of a story to give now with words.

John Danaher (1:43:03.920)

I would need to demonstrate it.

Lex Fridman (1:43:05.280)

But the way in which we drill

John Danaher (1:43:06.600)

is not your standard method of drilling.

Lex Fridman (1:43:08.360)

And then it's into sparring.

Lex Fridman (1:43:11.760)

But if you give me a choice

Lex Fridman (1:43:12.720)

between a bad drilling partner and sparring,

John Danaher (1:43:16.280)

I could make the same choice that most black belts make,

Lex Fridman (1:43:19.440)

which I would go with sparring.

John Danaher (1:43:21.160)

Because you can create drilling

Lex Fridman (1:43:22.800)

within the sparring environment.

John Danaher (1:43:26.480)

Like good drilling is a wonderful thing.

Lex Fridman (1:43:28.360)

Bad drilling is just a worthless waste of time.

John Danaher (1:43:33.560)

Okay, before, I have a million questions for you,

Lex Fridman (1:43:36.040)

but I have to ask,

Lex Fridman (1:43:37.200)

can you, we've described the fundamentals of jiu jitsu.

Lex Fridman (1:43:41.040)

Can we describe the principles, the fundamentals

John Danaher (1:43:44.480)

of one of the interesting systems you've developed,

Lex Fridman (1:43:46.760)

which is the leg lock system?

John Danaher (1:43:49.200)

Yeah, anything in particular

Lex Fridman (1:43:50.960)

or just like a general understanding

Lex Fridman (1:43:53.280)

of what are some of the major principles of it?

Lex Fridman (1:43:55.840)

Well, it's like me coming to Miyamoto Musashi and asking,

Lex Fridman (1:43:59.640)

can you describe the principles of sword fighting?

Lex Fridman (1:44:03.920)

You're too generous.

John Danaher (1:44:06.560)

Let's start off with some context.

Lex Fridman (1:44:08.480)

When I began the sport of jiu jitsu,

John Danaher (1:44:13.480)

I was taught a fairly classical approach to jiu jitsu,

Lex Fridman (1:44:20.680)

which leg locks were a part of it,

Lex Fridman (1:44:23.200)

but not an emphasized part of it.

Lex Fridman (1:44:26.960)

The overall culture of the times is the mid 1990s.

John Danaher (1:44:30.160)

The overall culture of the time saw leg locks

Lex Fridman (1:44:34.160)

as largely ineffective.

John Danaher (1:44:41.440)

It was, we were told that against good opposition,

Lex Fridman (1:44:44.840)

they just didn't work very well.

John Danaher (1:44:46.000)

They were low percentage techniques.

Lex Fridman (1:44:48.160)

We were also told that they were tactically unsound

John Danaher (1:44:52.400)

because if you ever attempted them

Lex Fridman (1:44:54.440)

and you lost control of the leg lock,

John Danaher (1:44:58.160)

your opponent would end up on top of you

Lex Fridman (1:44:59.640)

or in some kind of good position

Lex Fridman (1:45:01.280)

and you'd be in terrible trouble.

Lex Fridman (1:45:04.400)

And we were also told that they were unsafe,

John Danaher (1:45:06.680)

that if they were applied in the gym,

Lex Fridman (1:45:09.640)

there'd be far too many injuries

Lex Fridman (1:45:10.840)

and people would be badly hurt.

Lex Fridman (1:45:13.320)

And that was the received wisdom of that time.

Lex Fridman (1:45:16.920)

And so I didn't even work with them at all.

Lex Fridman (1:45:21.160)

And they would be shown occasionally in the gym

Lex Fridman (1:45:24.360)

and you'd learn them, you'd drill them.

Lex Fridman (1:45:26.880)

But in sparring, I showed no interest.

John Danaher (1:45:33.600)

You probably know that change when I met

Lex Fridman (1:45:35.600)

the great American grappler, Dean Lister,

John Danaher (1:45:38.200)

who early in his career was using Achilles locks

Lex Fridman (1:45:41.440)

with considerable success.

John Danaher (1:45:42.920)

I met him in the gym, wonderful fellow.

Lex Fridman (1:45:45.240)

And...

John Danaher (1:45:46.320)

Achilles locks is like a straight full lock.

Lex Fridman (1:45:48.120)

Yes, that's correct, yes.

Lex Fridman (1:45:49.720)

And he went on to become a heel hooker

Lex Fridman (1:45:53.560)

and win 280 CCs later on in his career.

Lex Fridman (1:45:56.440)

But we never met again after that.

Lex Fridman (1:45:59.200)

And that opened some doors of inquiry and...

John Danaher (1:46:06.560)

Well, he asked this first principles question

Lex Fridman (1:46:09.160)

is why would you only use half the body in a game

Lex Fridman (1:46:13.360)

that involves the human body?

Lex Fridman (1:46:14.720)

Perfect sense.

Lex Fridman (1:46:15.760)

So that opened doors to inquiry.

Lex Fridman (1:46:18.760)

And if you looked around the Jiu Jitsu world at that time,

John Danaher (1:46:22.640)

the number of specialized leg lockers was very small.

Lex Fridman (1:46:27.920)

And most of them were from outside of conventional Jiu Jitsu.

John Danaher (1:46:34.000)

For example, you could look around and see people

Lex Fridman (1:46:35.880)

like Romina Sato had sharp leg locks

John Danaher (1:46:39.440)

for that time period in the 1990s.

Lex Fridman (1:46:43.120)

So they were out there, they existed.

Lex Fridman (1:46:45.120)

And you'd see people like Ken Shamrock

Lex Fridman (1:46:47.280)

would use heel hooks in competition

Lex Fridman (1:46:50.240)

and he had some good success with them.

Lex Fridman (1:46:55.200)

When I began experimenting in the gym,

John Danaher (1:46:59.240)

fairly soon, certain truths started to become evident.

Lex Fridman (1:47:03.960)

And the most important of these

John Danaher (1:47:07.800)

can be understood very quickly.

Lex Fridman (1:47:09.160)

And they were relatively easy to discover.

John Danaher (1:47:13.160)

The first was that most people,

Lex Fridman (1:47:17.440)

when they went to understand and study leg locking.

Lex Fridman (1:47:24.560)

And when I talk about leg locking,

Lex Fridman (1:47:26.000)

I'm gonna talk about one specific type,

John Danaher (1:47:27.640)

which is the most high percentage type.

Lex Fridman (1:47:29.800)

This is leg locks, which are performed

John Danaher (1:47:31.800)

with entanglements of your opponent's legs with your legs.

Lex Fridman (1:47:35.000)

There are other forms of leg lock,

Lex Fridman (1:47:36.320)

but these are relatively low percentage

Lex Fridman (1:47:38.120)

and don't figure heavily in competition.

Lex Fridman (1:47:39.840)

So I'll ignore them.

Lex Fridman (1:47:43.360)

Most people made no distinction

John Danaher (1:47:45.920)

between the mechanism of control

Lex Fridman (1:47:48.680)

versus the mechanism of breaking.

John Danaher (1:47:51.760)

The heel hook is what ultimately breaks the ankle.

Lex Fridman (1:47:56.720)

But the mechanism of control

John Danaher (1:47:58.120)

is the entanglement of your legs to your opponent's legs.

Lex Fridman (1:48:01.720)

The Japanese term ashigurami

John Danaher (1:48:03.880)

literally just means like leg entanglement.

Lex Fridman (1:48:05.920)

It's a generic term.

John Danaher (1:48:06.880)

It could apply to any form of entanglement.

Lex Fridman (1:48:08.880)

There are many options.

John Danaher (1:48:10.360)

My idea was let's focus on the entanglement first

Lex Fridman (1:48:16.160)

and worry about the breaking mechanism second.

John Danaher (1:48:19.840)

This was analogous to the idea of position before submission.

Lex Fridman (1:48:23.600)

Only you couldn't talk about it

John Danaher (1:48:25.080)

in terms of conventional positions

Lex Fridman (1:48:27.240)

because ashigurami doesn't really fit

John Danaher (1:48:29.800)

into the traditional hierarchies,

Lex Fridman (1:48:31.920)

positional hierarchies of jiu jitsu.

Lex Fridman (1:48:33.880)

So the conversation was switched from position to submission

Lex Fridman (1:48:38.400)

to control to submission.

John Danaher (1:48:40.960)

Now, wrapping two of your legs

Lex Fridman (1:48:44.040)

around one of your opponent's legs

John Danaher (1:48:45.640)

gives you many different options.

Lex Fridman (1:48:46.880)

You can do it with your feet on the outside,

Lex Fridman (1:48:48.840)

so called 50, 50 variations.

Lex Fridman (1:48:50.600)

You can do it with your feet on the inside

Lex Fridman (1:48:52.240)

and form what we call inside foot position.

Lex Fridman (1:48:59.000)

There's pros and cons to both.

John Danaher (1:49:00.320)

There's also methods of harmonizing the two.

Lex Fridman (1:49:03.040)

So you have one foot on the inside

Lex Fridman (1:49:04.280)

and one foot on the outside.

Lex Fridman (1:49:05.760)

You can do it with a straight leg

John Danaher (1:49:09.720)

where you heel hook from the outside

Lex Fridman (1:49:11.720)

or you can bring the leg across your center line

Lex Fridman (1:49:13.560)

and heel hook from the inside.

Lex Fridman (1:49:15.520)

You will start to notice

John Danaher (1:49:18.000)

as you work through these different variations

Lex Fridman (1:49:20.440)

that some present advantages over others.

John Danaher (1:49:24.360)

All of them come at a price to some degree,

Lex Fridman (1:49:29.360)

regardless of which ashigurami option you use.

John Danaher (1:49:32.120)

There will be some degree of foot exposure

Lex Fridman (1:49:34.720)

on my part to my opponent

Lex Fridman (1:49:36.440)

and some degree of back exposure

Lex Fridman (1:49:38.680)

on my part relative to my opponent.

Lex Fridman (1:49:40.520)

So that's the downside of it.

Lex Fridman (1:49:42.800)

Variations within those different ashigurami

John Danaher (1:49:46.800)

enable you to lessen danger in some respects

Lex Fridman (1:49:51.000)

and at the price of gaining dangers in others.

Lex Fridman (1:49:54.960)

So you get this wide array of choices.

Lex Fridman (1:49:58.520)

There's not this kind of simplistic hierarchy

John Danaher (1:50:01.040)

that you see in the basic position.

Lex Fridman (1:50:03.720)

The basic positions of jiu jitsu,

Lex Fridman (1:50:05.480)

but there are hierarchies.

Lex Fridman (1:50:07.400)

I do, for example, generally favor inside heel hooks

John Danaher (1:50:10.800)

over outside heel hooks.

Lex Fridman (1:50:13.800)

If I feel my opponent is very good at exposing my back

John Danaher (1:50:19.240)

while I'm in ashigurami,

Lex Fridman (1:50:20.240)

I generally prefer 50, 50 situations.

John Danaher (1:50:23.080)

If I believe my opponent is very good at counter leg locks,

Lex Fridman (1:50:25.880)

I generally prefer my feet on the inside

John Danaher (1:50:28.400)

working with variations of insides and kaku,

Lex Fridman (1:50:31.320)

et cetera, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (1:50:32.360)

So there are broad heuristic rules

Lex Fridman (1:50:35.160)

that we can give to work in these situations.

John Danaher (1:50:41.600)

Once you start to understand

Lex Fridman (1:50:43.640)

there's a variety of entanglements you can use,

John Danaher (1:50:48.000)

then you start getting into the really interesting ideas

Lex Fridman (1:50:50.920)

that as you perform one given attack, one given heel hook,

John Danaher (1:50:56.600)

you can flow through different forms of ashigurami

Lex Fridman (1:51:01.320)

where you can create new dangers

Lex Fridman (1:51:04.760)

and avoid possible pitfalls in a very short timeframe

Lex Fridman (1:51:11.720)

as you switch from one ashigurami to another over time.

Lex Fridman (1:51:14.520)

So that as your opponent's lines of resistance

Lex Fridman (1:51:16.760)

to an initial attack change,

John Danaher (1:51:18.720)

you can accommodate those

Lex Fridman (1:51:19.920)

by switching to another form of ashigurami

Lex Fridman (1:51:22.320)

so that your mechanism of control

Lex Fridman (1:51:24.680)

is always pointing in opposite directions of his escape.

Lex Fridman (1:51:28.080)

And if you focus on this idea of control through the legs,

Lex Fridman (1:51:32.920)

you can completely change the nature of leg locking

Lex Fridman (1:51:36.760)

and take it away from what it was in the 1990s

Lex Fridman (1:51:39.760)

an opportunistic method of attack

John Danaher (1:51:42.040)

based upon surprise, speed and power

Lex Fridman (1:51:45.120)

into one based on control.

John Danaher (1:51:47.560)

If you can do this,

Lex Fridman (1:51:49.840)

you can undermine many of the basic criticisms

John Danaher (1:51:55.080)

of leg locking which were prevalent when I began.

Lex Fridman (1:51:57.840)

I began the sport of jiu jitsu.

John Danaher (1:52:01.320)

For example, if I can completely control and immobilize you,

Lex Fridman (1:52:06.720)

I can perform the lock very, very safely.

John Danaher (1:52:10.040)

If my only way of breaking your leg

Lex Fridman (1:52:11.800)

is to be faster and more powerful than you,

John Danaher (1:52:14.840)

nine times out of 10 when I apply it,

Lex Fridman (1:52:16.440)

I'm gonna hurt your leg as much by accident as anything.

Lex Fridman (1:52:19.960)

But if I can completely immobilize you

Lex Fridman (1:52:22.040)

and as every attempt you make to escape,

John Danaher (1:52:24.040)

I can follow you and immobilize you in new directions,

Lex Fridman (1:52:28.000)

then I can apply the lock with as much force

John Danaher (1:52:31.560)

or as little force as possible.

Lex Fridman (1:52:33.880)

And so you'll see in our training room

John Danaher (1:52:35.680)

despite over considerably more than two decades,

Lex Fridman (1:52:40.400)

sorry, a decade and a half now

John Danaher (1:52:42.160)

of heel hooking using these methods,

Lex Fridman (1:52:46.280)

the number of people severely injured by heel hooks is tiny.

John Danaher (1:52:50.680)

I would say I've seen more people injured by far

Lex Fridman (1:52:55.680)

by kimuras in the time I've been training

John Danaher (1:52:58.680)

than I have by heel hooks,

Lex Fridman (1:53:00.040)

despite them having a similar twisting dynamic to them.

John Danaher (1:53:05.920)

If you build a culture where people focus on control

Lex Fridman (1:53:09.840)

rather than speed of execution,

John Danaher (1:53:11.920)

then the injury rate goes down appreciably.

Lex Fridman (1:53:15.080)

The whole idea of positional loss,

John Danaher (1:53:16.920)

everyone was critical of leg locks.

Lex Fridman (1:53:18.600)

Now, if you go for leg locks and they don't work,

John Danaher (1:53:20.280)

well, now you're in trouble.

Lex Fridman (1:53:21.880)

The guy's gonna be on top of you.

John Danaher (1:53:23.360)

They never make that criticism with armbars.

Lex Fridman (1:53:26.440)

Okay, you can be in the mounted position,

John Danaher (1:53:27.760)

go for an armbar, end up on bottom,

Lex Fridman (1:53:29.360)

lose the armbar and lose position,

Lex Fridman (1:53:30.800)

but I've never heard anyone criticize armbars

Lex Fridman (1:53:33.160)

on that account.

John Danaher (1:53:34.320)

More importantly, I believed from early on

Lex Fridman (1:53:38.440)

that the best place to attack leg locks is not top position,

John Danaher (1:53:41.600)

it's bottom position.

Lex Fridman (1:53:43.040)

You'll see that over 90% of my athletes

John Danaher (1:53:45.880)

attack leg locks from underneath people,

Lex Fridman (1:53:47.640)

not on top of people.

Lex Fridman (1:53:48.800)

So there is no positional loss.

Lex Fridman (1:53:50.120)

You're already underneath them.

Lex Fridman (1:53:51.800)

And so that criticism was null and void.

Lex Fridman (1:53:56.600)

And by focusing on this idea of breaking down

Lex Fridman (1:54:01.240)

and distinguishing between the mechanism of control

Lex Fridman (1:54:04.000)

and the mechanism of breaking,

John Danaher (1:54:06.000)

that created something new and something interesting.

Lex Fridman (1:54:09.600)

There was also another advantage that I had

John Danaher (1:54:13.160)

in terms of creating influence with leg locking.

Lex Fridman (1:54:17.320)

When you look at the great leg lockers of the past,

John Danaher (1:54:19.640)

they were basically iconoclasts.

Lex Fridman (1:54:21.880)

They were people who came out of nowhere

John Danaher (1:54:24.000)

who just had this remarkable success with leg locks.

Lex Fridman (1:54:30.200)

But they were just seen as unique individuals.

John Danaher (1:54:36.400)

They had their game and they were good at it.

Lex Fridman (1:54:39.000)

What was unique about the squad

John Danaher (1:54:40.400)

is you had not just one person,

Lex Fridman (1:54:43.160)

but a team of people who came out

Lex Fridman (1:54:45.240)

and did pretty much the same thing.

Lex Fridman (1:54:47.800)

These people had very different body types

Lex Fridman (1:54:50.080)

and very different personalities.

Lex Fridman (1:54:52.440)

So it wasn't that one kind of body type was good at it.

John Danaher (1:54:55.120)

You had tall people like Gordon Ryan.

Lex Fridman (1:54:57.680)

You had short people like Nikki Ryan.

John Danaher (1:55:00.480)

You had someone in the middle like Gary Tonin.

Lex Fridman (1:55:03.520)

You had fast people like Gary Tonin.

John Danaher (1:55:05.240)

You had slow people like Gordon.

Lex Fridman (1:55:08.000)

There was every kind of body type involved.

Lex Fridman (1:55:12.520)

And it was like, people could see this was different

Lex Fridman (1:55:14.600)

because it worked for an entire team

John Danaher (1:55:17.760)

as opposed to a unique individual

Lex Fridman (1:55:19.800)

who had unique attributes.

Lex Fridman (1:55:21.840)

And then started to foster the belief

Lex Fridman (1:55:23.960)

that if it can work for a team, it can work for anyone,

John Danaher (1:55:28.520)

which means it can work for me.

Lex Fridman (1:55:31.160)

And I think that had a big effect.

John Danaher (1:55:33.400)

That's why I owe a lot to those early students,

Lex Fridman (1:55:39.680)

Gordon Ryan, Gary Tonin, Eddie Cummings, and Nikki Ryan.

Lex Fridman (1:55:44.680)

And those four kids came from nowhere.

Lex Fridman (1:55:50.880)

Gary had some success in grappling,

John Danaher (1:55:53.680)

like low level success in grappling

Lex Fridman (1:55:55.480)

before becoming a full time member of the squad.

Lex Fridman (1:56:00.200)

But the others were just nobodies who no one had known.

Lex Fridman (1:56:04.720)

And yet within a five year timeframe,

John Danaher (1:56:07.000)

they were all going up against world championship competition

Lex Fridman (1:56:10.240)

and doing exceedingly well.

Lex Fridman (1:56:13.280)

And which gives further credence

Lex Fridman (1:56:16.160)

to the idea of the five year program.

Lex Fridman (1:56:18.600)

And I think by operating as a team,

Lex Fridman (1:56:24.280)

those young men did an incredible job

John Danaher (1:56:26.360)

of convincing the grappling world

Lex Fridman (1:56:28.400)

that this wasn't just about, well, they're just different

John Danaher (1:56:31.360)

or it works for their body type or them as individuals.

Lex Fridman (1:56:35.760)

It was like, no, if a team can do it, anyone can do it.

Lex Fridman (1:56:39.360)

And I think that's what really convinced people

Lex Fridman (1:56:41.880)

that this was something worth studying.

John Danaher (1:56:44.000)

This is something that could be a big part of their lives.

Lex Fridman (1:56:46.840)

But also convinced you and convinced each other

John Danaher (1:56:49.480)

in those early days when you're developing the science.

Lex Fridman (1:56:52.400)

Essentially what was missing

John Danaher (1:56:53.560)

is an entire science and system of leg locks.

Lex Fridman (1:56:57.680)

Because it's not like you knew for sure

John Danaher (1:57:01.200)

that there's a lot here to be discovered

Lex Fridman (1:57:03.680)

in terms of control.

John Danaher (1:57:04.640)

You perhaps hadn't, just like you said, an initial intuition,

Lex Fridman (1:57:08.720)

but you have to have enough,

John Danaher (1:57:12.440)

there's perseverance required to take,

Lex Fridman (1:57:14.320)

it's the Johnny Ive thing to take from the initial idea

John Danaher (1:57:16.560)

to an entire system.

Lex Fridman (1:57:17.760)

Is there a sense you have about how complicated

Lex Fridman (1:57:22.920)

and how big this world of control in leg locks is?

Lex Fridman (1:57:30.160)

How complicated is it?

John Danaher (1:57:31.840)

You've achieved a lot of success.

Lex Fridman (1:57:33.480)

You have a lot of powerful ideas

John Danaher (1:57:35.360)

in terms of inside, outside,

Lex Fridman (1:57:36.720)

what's high percentage, what's not,

John Danaher (1:57:38.520)

what's higher reward, what's a low risk,

Lex Fridman (1:57:40.840)

all those kinds of things.

Lex Fridman (1:57:42.760)

And then you also mentioned kind of transitions,

Lex Fridman (1:57:45.600)

not transitions, but how you move with your opponent

John Danaher (1:57:49.360)

to resist their escape through control.

Lex Fridman (1:57:53.520)

How much do you understand about this world?

John Danaher (1:57:55.920)

This is a fascinating question.

Lex Fridman (1:57:59.560)

As a general rule, the most powerful developments

Lex Fridman (1:58:04.560)

are always at the onset of a project, okay?

Lex Fridman (1:58:08.040)

Let's give an example.

John Danaher (1:58:10.600)

The jet engine was, I believe, first conceived

Lex Fridman (1:58:16.520)

in the late 1930s, just around the time of World War II.

John Danaher (1:58:20.120)

It was developed with great pace because of World War II.

Lex Fridman (1:58:25.200)

Obviously, military research was a huge thing back then.

Lex Fridman (1:58:28.960)

And first fielded, I believe, by the jet engine,

Lex Fridman (1:58:32.960)

first fielded, I believe, by the Germans in around 1943.

John Danaher (1:58:40.880)

Jet aircraft didn't play a big role in World War II.

Lex Fridman (1:58:44.280)

They were there at the end

Lex Fridman (1:58:45.480)

and they did play a significant role,

Lex Fridman (1:58:47.880)

but in terms of numbers, they just weren't there.

Lex Fridman (1:58:52.400)

So by around 1945, you had the onset of the jet age

Lex Fridman (1:58:57.400)

and the jet engine began to replace the piston engine

John Danaher (1:59:00.960)

in most aircraft.

Lex Fridman (1:59:01.880)

It was the new way of doing things.

John Danaher (1:59:06.120)

If you look at the pace of development

Lex Fridman (1:59:10.440)

of jet engine aircraft technology from 1945 to 1960,

John Danaher (1:59:17.520)

it is unbelievable.

Lex Fridman (1:59:21.120)

There was a solid decade where they were gaining

John Danaher (1:59:25.000)

almost 100 miles an hour per year for a decade.

Lex Fridman (1:59:29.400)

That's a form of growth that, I mean,

John Danaher (1:59:33.720)

in the world of engineering,

Lex Fridman (1:59:35.000)

that's the only time you see growth like that

Lex Fridman (1:59:38.160)

is in things like Bitcoin and that's about it, okay?

Lex Fridman (1:59:43.920)

Let's put things in perspective, okay?

John Danaher (1:59:47.080)

In World War II, the standard US aircraft bomber

Lex Fridman (1:59:51.160)

was the B17, which was a midsize bomber

John Danaher (1:59:55.480)

with a fairly limited load capacity

Lex Fridman (1:59:57.760)

and I think top speed well below 300 miles an hour.

John Danaher (20:01.380)

was fascinating to me, that just because of timing,

Lex Fridman (20:06.100)

you can take these like monsters, giant people,

John Danaher (20:10.500)

like incredible athletes, and just smash them.

Lex Fridman (20:14.660)

With, it just doesn't, there was no struggle to it.

John Danaher (20:18.180)

It was always like a look of surprise.

Lex Fridman (20:19.980)

Judo, dominance in Judo has a look,

Lex Fridman (20:23.580)

like the other person is like, what just happened?

Lex Fridman (20:27.060)

This is very different from wrestling.

John Danaher (20:28.580)

It's built into the rule structure too,

Lex Fridman (20:30.700)

the whole idea of an epon,

John Danaher (20:32.060)

of a match being over in an instant.

Lex Fridman (20:34.300)

And that creates a thrilling spectator sport,

John Danaher (20:39.020)

because you can, as you say, with Ashiwaza,

Lex Fridman (20:42.020)

the foot sweeps, you can take someone out

John Danaher (20:45.980)

who's heavily favored, and if you're not,

Lex Fridman (20:49.780)

Judo is the most unforgiving of all the grappling sports.

John Danaher (20:53.460)

If you have a lapse of concentration for half a second,

Lex Fridman (20:56.380)

it's done, it's over.

John Danaher (20:59.220)

If those guys get a grip on each other,

Lex Fridman (21:01.180)

any one of them can throw the other.

John Danaher (21:05.340)

The idea, when you see someone like Nomura,

Lex Fridman (21:11.060)

who won three Olympic gold medals,

John Danaher (21:14.220)

to win across three Olympics,

Lex Fridman (21:17.500)

and that's an incredible achievement,

John Danaher (21:19.460)

given how many ways there are to lose

Lex Fridman (21:21.500)

in the standing position in Judo,

Lex Fridman (21:22.900)

and how unforgiving it is as a sport,

Lex Fridman (21:25.660)

it shows an incredible level of dominance.

Lex Fridman (21:28.660)

And I think when I was also introduced at that time

Lex Fridman (21:33.900)

to the idea, just like in Judo,

John Danaher (21:36.380)

I think in Jiu Jitsu is the same,

Lex Fridman (21:38.980)

a lot of sports is probably the same,

John Danaher (21:40.620)

is there's ways to win that include kind of,

Lex Fridman (21:45.140)

if I were to use a bad term, stalling,

John Danaher (21:48.100)

which is like use strategy to slow down,

Lex Fridman (21:51.260)

to destroy all the weapons your opponent has,

Lex Fridman (21:53.580)

and just to wait it out,

Lex Fridman (21:55.220)

to sort of break your opponent by,

John Danaher (21:58.380)

yeah, shutting down all their weapons,

Lex Fridman (22:00.140)

but not using any of your own.

Lex Fridman (22:02.380)

And now, Travis was always going for,

Lex Fridman (22:06.460)

he's of course really good at gripping

Lex Fridman (22:08.940)

and couldn't do that whole game,

Lex Fridman (22:10.260)

but he was going for the big throws.

Lex Fridman (22:12.860)

And he was almost getting frustrated

Lex Fridman (22:15.500)

by a lot of the opponents.

John Danaher (22:17.660)

I remember Ola Bischoff, I think.

Lex Fridman (22:21.660)

Yes, from Germany.

John Danaher (22:23.580)

From Germany.

Lex Fridman (22:24.420)

Very talented.

John Danaher (22:25.300)

Very incredible.

Lex Fridman (22:26.300)

I know he's very good at doing big throws

Lex Fridman (22:28.580)

and he's an incredible judoka,

Lex Fridman (22:29.820)

but he was also incredible

John Danaher (22:31.980)

at just frustrating his opponents

Lex Fridman (22:33.740)

with gripping and strategy and so on.

Lex Fridman (22:36.100)

And I just remember feeling the pain of this person,

Lex Fridman (22:39.660)

like Travis, who went through just,

John Danaher (22:42.460)

he broke like every part of his body.

Lex Fridman (22:44.420)

He went through so many injuries.

John Danaher (22:46.500)

Just this person who dedicated his entire life

Lex Fridman (22:50.060)

to this moment in 2008 and then 2012 and 2016,

John Danaher (22:55.060)

just gave everything.

Lex Fridman (22:57.020)

You could see it on his face

John Danaher (22:59.620)

that his weapons are being shut down

Lex Fridman (23:04.380)

and he's still pushing forward.

John Danaher (23:05.940)

He's still with that, both the frustration and the power.

Lex Fridman (23:09.420)

I mean, the kind of throw he does is his main one,

John Danaher (23:14.140)

I think, is the standing, it was called Seoi Nage.

Lex Fridman (23:16.740)

Ippon Seoi Nage.

John Danaher (23:17.580)

Ippon Seoi Nage.

Lex Fridman (23:18.420)

But that was the other thing is like,

John Danaher (23:21.220)

the techniques he used was these big throws

Lex Fridman (23:25.220)

that there's something to me about the Seoi Nage.

John Danaher (23:27.860)

I fell in love with that throw.

Lex Fridman (23:29.980)

That's my main throw, standing Seoi Nage.

John Danaher (23:34.300)

That is like...

Lex Fridman (23:35.260)

Why do you favor the standing variation?

Lex Fridman (23:37.100)

Because of the amplitude?

Lex Fridman (23:39.540)

You get a more powerful wind up.

John Danaher (23:41.780)

Yeah, power.

Lex Fridman (23:43.220)

It's like...

Lex Fridman (23:44.060)

Are you a fan of Koga?

Lex Fridman (23:45.220)

Yes.

John Danaher (23:46.060)

That's when I, Travis,

Lex Fridman (23:48.500)

so Koga and Travis opened up my...

John Danaher (23:52.740)

Travis uses the same gripping patterns

Lex Fridman (23:54.460)

for Seoi Nage as Koga.

John Danaher (23:55.700)

All the same, and the way he uses his hips and turns.

Lex Fridman (23:59.460)

And I remember going to my judo club

Lex Fridman (24:01.780)

and other judo clubs and they were all saying,

Lex Fridman (24:05.020)

this is the wrong way to do it.

John Danaher (24:07.020)

The way Travis does it is the wrong way to do it.

Lex Fridman (24:08.780)

And I remember...

John Danaher (24:09.620)

I've always been amazed by this, by the way.

Lex Fridman (24:11.060)

I don't mean to cut you off,

Lex Fridman (24:12.340)

but I could literally fill 20 hours

Lex Fridman (24:17.340)

of reproductions of people who will tell me

John Danaher (24:22.820)

that either my students or other great world champions

Lex Fridman (24:28.220)

are doing things wrong.

Lex Fridman (24:30.700)

And I'm looking at them and I'm like,

Lex Fridman (24:35.140)

who would I rather trust here in their judgment?

John Danaher (24:39.380)

Koga, who was one of the greatest throwers of all time,

Lex Fridman (24:44.300)

or you, a recreational guy who couldn't throw my grandmother.

John Danaher (24:54.060)

I'm supposed to take your word over his.

Lex Fridman (24:56.740)

Well, say, don't listen to what people say.

John Danaher (25:00.620)

I'm gonna give you a piece of advice here.

Lex Fridman (25:02.500)

Watch what the best people do, okay?

John Danaher (25:06.020)

That's how you get superior athletic performance.

Lex Fridman (25:09.220)

I'm gonna say that again.

John Danaher (25:11.180)

Don't listen to what people say.

Lex Fridman (25:13.060)

Watch what they do,

John Danaher (25:14.860)

particularly under the stress of high level competition,

Lex Fridman (25:17.420)

because that's when you see their real game,

Lex Fridman (25:19.580)

what they really do under pressure, okay?

Lex Fridman (25:22.540)

And if you can emulate that,

John Danaher (25:24.220)

you're gonna be very successful.

Lex Fridman (25:26.020)

I guess what I was frustrated with, to your point,

John Danaher (25:29.740)

is that the argument against Koga

Lex Fridman (25:32.740)

is he has a very specific body type

Lex Fridman (25:37.020)

and he figured out something that worked for him.

Lex Fridman (25:39.540)

The statement is that might not be applicable to you

John Danaher (25:46.340)

or to the general public of judo players

Lex Fridman (25:49.460)

that wanna succeed.

John Danaher (25:51.220)

That, by the way, at the shallow level, might be true.

Lex Fridman (25:57.260)

The point is there might be a body of knowledge

John Danaher (26:00.260)

that's yet to be discovered and explored that Koga opened up

Lex Fridman (26:05.260)

that I wanted to understand why his technique worked.

John Danaher (26:09.980)

It made no sense to me that with a single foot,

Lex Fridman (26:12.420)

like the way you turn the hip,

Lex Fridman (26:14.180)

the single foot that steps in, why does that work?

Lex Fridman (26:17.500)

Because it was actually very difficult to make work

John Danaher (26:20.500)

for me as a white belt in the very beginning.

Lex Fridman (26:23.180)

It doesn't make sense.

John Danaher (26:24.500)

Like people just, they don't get loaded up onto your hip.

Lex Fridman (26:28.060)

Anyway, for people who don't watch Koga highlights,

John Danaher (26:30.740)

watch Travis Stevens highlights,

Lex Fridman (26:32.660)

but the details of the technique don't make sense,

Lex Fridman (26:36.740)

but when mastered, it feels like

Lex Fridman (26:40.180)

there's something fundamental there

John Danaher (26:42.220)

that hasn't been explored yet.

Lex Fridman (26:43.940)

It's like Koga and Travis made me think

John Danaher (26:48.340)

that we don't know most of the body mechanics involved

Lex Fridman (26:53.940)

in dominance in judo.

John Danaher (26:55.660)

Like we just kind of found a few pockets

Lex Fridman (26:57.900)

that work really well.

John Danaher (26:58.860)

There's Yamada, there's these different throws, Osorogari.

Lex Fridman (27:02.820)

I wonder if there's like totally cool new things

John Danaher (27:05.180)

that we haven't discovered.

Lex Fridman (27:06.180)

And that Seinagi gave a little peak

John Danaher (27:07.980)

because there's very few people that I'm aware of

Lex Fridman (27:10.980)

that do it the way Travis and Koga did.

Lex Fridman (27:13.860)

May I ask you a question?

Lex Fridman (27:15.340)

Yes.

John Danaher (27:17.220)

The choice of standing Seinagi,

Lex Fridman (27:20.540)

I should say this for your listeners.

John Danaher (27:23.620)

They're probably thinking,

Lex Fridman (27:24.460)

what the hell are these two guys talking about?

John Danaher (27:26.860)

Seinagi is one of the more high percentage throws

Lex Fridman (27:30.180)

in the Olympic sport of judo.

John Danaher (27:32.660)

Probably Uchimata is probably number one

Lex Fridman (27:36.300)

and variations of Seinagi would be

John Danaher (27:39.140)

in the top five for sure.

Lex Fridman (27:41.740)

The basic choice you have in modern competition

John Danaher (27:44.700)

is the more difficult standing Seinagi

Lex Fridman (27:47.900)

where you literally are up on your feet

Lex Fridman (27:49.980)

and you perform a shoulder throw

Lex Fridman (27:52.340)

that takes your opponent over from a full standing position.

John Danaher (27:55.740)

The most popular form of Seinagi

Lex Fridman (27:59.260)

in modern competition by a landslide

John Danaher (28:01.100)

is not the standing version.

Lex Fridman (28:02.460)

It's a drop Seinagi where you go down to your knees.

John Danaher (28:05.540)

This means you have a much easier time

Lex Fridman (28:08.500)

getting underneath your opponent's center of gravity.

John Danaher (28:10.500)

The defining feature of any Seinagi

Lex Fridman (28:12.500)

is getting underneath your opponent's center of gravity

Lex Fridman (28:14.820)

and lifting them.

Lex Fridman (28:15.660)

Seoi literally means to lift and carry.

Lex Fridman (28:21.340)

Why did you choose the more difficult version?

Lex Fridman (28:23.580)

What was your motivation?

John Danaher (28:24.740)

You know, you're a smart kid.

Lex Fridman (28:26.900)

You know right from the start

John Danaher (28:28.700)

that for every standing Seinagi,

Lex Fridman (28:30.340)

there's 20 drop Seinagis in modern competition.

John Danaher (28:32.660)

One is obviously more high percentage.

Lex Fridman (28:34.860)

One obviously works for a wider variety of body types.

John Danaher (28:39.380)

The number of people who are successful

Lex Fridman (28:41.300)

with standing Seinagi is dramatically lower.

Lex Fridman (28:44.700)

And it appears to be a move which is completely absent

Lex Fridman (28:47.660)

in the heavyweight divisions

Lex Fridman (28:49.980)

and rarely seen in the lightweight divisions.

Lex Fridman (28:53.340)

Why?

Lex Fridman (28:55.180)

What was the motivation?

Lex Fridman (28:56.900)

Why did you willingly adopt the less high percentage

Lex Fridman (29:00.100)

over the more high percentage?

Lex Fridman (29:01.820)

And this would be very interesting.

John Danaher (29:04.860)

I would love you to break it apart

Lex Fridman (29:06.460)

because I apply the same kind of thinking

John Danaher (29:09.300)

to basically everything.

Lex Fridman (29:10.380)

I mentioned to you offline,

John Danaher (29:11.460)

there's these Boston Dynamics Spot Robots.

Lex Fridman (29:14.940)

When I first met Spot, I fell in love.

John Danaher (29:18.140)

I don't understand what exactly,

Lex Fridman (29:20.620)

but there's magic there.

Lex Fridman (29:22.700)

And I just got excited by it.

Lex Fridman (29:24.580)

And that fire burns.

John Danaher (29:26.460)

I wanna work with these robots.

Lex Fridman (29:27.700)

I wanna work with the robots.

John Danaher (29:29.660)

I want to, I felt like there's something special there

Lex Fridman (29:33.620)

that I could build something interesting with,

John Danaher (29:36.500)

create something interesting with.

Lex Fridman (29:38.100)

And the same with the standing Seinagi

John Danaher (29:41.300)

from Koga and Travis.

Lex Fridman (29:43.100)

I just fell in love with that technique.

John Danaher (29:44.820)

Just even watching,

Lex Fridman (29:45.660)

I didn't even know what the hell to do with it.

Lex Fridman (29:47.820)

Was it aesthetic?

Lex Fridman (29:49.580)

The standing Seinagi is more beautiful in execution.

John Danaher (29:51.940)

There's no question.

Lex Fridman (29:52.780)

In my own, we're talking about love here, right?

John Danaher (29:58.060)

In my own definition of aesthetic, yes.

Lex Fridman (2:00:04.440)

Just 10 years later, you had the B52,

John Danaher (2:00:08.200)

which could fly across continents

Lex Fridman (2:00:10.200)

and deliver nuclear weapons

Lex Fridman (2:00:12.320)

and carry bomb loads of up to 70,000 pounds.

Lex Fridman (2:00:17.160)

In a decade, that happened.

John Danaher (2:00:21.000)

If you took a B17 pilot in 1943

Lex Fridman (2:00:24.160)

and put them inside a B52 a decade later,

John Danaher (2:00:27.480)

he would literally think he was on a UFO,

Lex Fridman (2:00:30.280)

a ship from another planet.

John Danaher (2:00:32.800)

That was the speed of development.

Lex Fridman (2:00:36.040)

Now, contrast that with the speed of modern development.

John Danaher (2:00:40.880)

If I took you in a time machine

Lex Fridman (2:00:43.680)

and I put you in a civil airliner in 1972,

John Danaher (2:00:49.840)

let's say a Boeing 737,

Lex Fridman (2:00:52.640)

it's not that different from what you fly in today.

John Danaher (2:00:55.520)

Flies at the same speed, has the same range,

Lex Fridman (2:00:59.120)

flies at the same altitude.

John Danaher (2:01:01.120)

It's not that different.

Lex Fridman (2:01:02.960)

The amount of progress between 1973 and 2020

John Danaher (2:01:08.280)

isn't very impressive,

Lex Fridman (2:01:10.480)

but the amount of progress from 1945 to 1955,

John Danaher (2:01:14.840)

or even better, 1960 was staggering.

Lex Fridman (2:01:18.600)

And so the initial progress tends to be meteoric,

Lex Fridman (2:01:23.200)

but after that, it tends to be incremental.

Lex Fridman (2:01:25.720)

That said, there's a guy named Elon Musk.

John Danaher (2:01:30.480)

There's been almost no development

Lex Fridman (2:01:32.560)

in terms of space rocket propulsion

Lex Fridman (2:01:38.800)

and rocket launches and going out into orbit

Lex Fridman (2:01:43.720)

or going out into deep space.

Lex Fridman (2:01:45.720)

And one guy comes along,

Lex Fridman (2:01:47.800)

one John Donahue type character,

Lex Fridman (2:01:50.280)

and says, it doesn't make sense why we don't use

Lex Fridman (2:01:53.160)

reusable rockets, why we don't make them much cheaper,

Lex Fridman (2:01:56.400)

why we don't launch every week

Lex Fridman (2:01:58.440)

as opposed to every few years.

John Danaher (2:02:00.880)

It doesn't make any sense why we don't go to the moon again

Lex Fridman (2:02:04.120)

over and over and over.

John Danaher (2:02:05.120)

It doesn't make any sense why we don't go to Mars

Lex Fridman (2:02:07.320)

and colonize Mars.

John Danaher (2:02:09.360)

It feels like it's not just a single jump to a B52.

Lex Fridman (2:02:15.640)

It's a series of these kinds of jumps.

Lex Fridman (2:02:18.440)

So the question is, is there another leap

Lex Fridman (2:02:21.720)

within the leg locking system?

John Danaher (2:02:24.120)

Time will tell.

Lex Fridman (2:02:26.720)

I do believe that we're in a phase now

John Danaher (2:02:30.320)

where the really big jumps have already been made

Lex Fridman (2:02:33.920)

and we're in the incremental phase at this point.

Lex Fridman (2:02:37.720)

What I do believe is that you will start

Lex Fridman (2:02:39.480)

to see new directions start to emerge,

John Danaher (2:02:42.440)

where you start to see the interface

Lex Fridman (2:02:44.040)

between leg locking and race link, for example.

John Danaher (2:02:46.560)

The interface between leg locking and back attacks.

Lex Fridman (2:02:49.440)

And that will provide new avenues of direction

John Danaher (2:02:52.640)

which will create new spurts of growth.

Lex Fridman (2:02:57.600)

But in terms of breaking people's legs,

John Danaher (2:03:00.880)

just the simple act of breaking legs,

Lex Fridman (2:03:03.160)

I believe we're in the incremental phase now

John Danaher (2:03:04.880)

rather than the meteoric phase.

Lex Fridman (2:03:06.880)

Let me ask you a ridiculous question.

Lex Fridman (2:03:08.360)

How hard is it to actually break a leg?

Lex Fridman (2:03:10.960)

Is this something you think about?

John Danaher (2:03:12.160)

I remember, because I'm a big fan

Lex Fridman (2:03:13.760)

of the straight foot lock, not, again,

John Danaher (2:03:17.280)

we're talking about to the standing Seoi Nage.

Lex Fridman (2:03:19.720)

Maybe it's my Russian roots with Samba

John Danaher (2:03:22.120)

or something like that.

Lex Fridman (2:03:22.960)

Maybe it's the Dean Lister, Achilles lock.

Lex Fridman (2:03:26.760)

But I love, maybe it's my body, something like that.

Lex Fridman (2:03:30.320)

I just love the squeeze of it, the control

Lex Fridman (2:03:34.000)

and the power of a straight foot lock.

Lex Fridman (2:03:38.200)

And I remember trying to,

John Danaher (2:03:42.800)

there's a few people in competition

Lex Fridman (2:03:44.480)

that didn't want to tap.

John Danaher (2:03:45.920)

Absolutely.

Lex Fridman (2:03:47.040)

And I remember in particular, there was one person,

John Danaher (2:03:52.040)

again, the finals match, Purple Belt.

Lex Fridman (2:03:54.040)

I remember it was a straight foot lock, it was perfect.

John Danaher (2:03:56.720)

Everything just perfect.

Lex Fridman (2:03:58.120)

And I remember going all in and there was a pop, pop, pop.

Lex Fridman (2:04:03.400)

And I couldn't do anything more.

Lex Fridman (2:04:05.400)

It wasn't breaking.

John Danaher (2:04:06.960)

It was just bending and bending and bending.

Lex Fridman (2:04:09.320)

And there's damage to it of some kind.

Lex Fridman (2:04:12.160)

But I wanted to like, you know, I wanted to see,

Lex Fridman (2:04:15.880)

first of all, it's very difficult psychologically

Lex Fridman (2:04:18.000)

because it's like, can I be violent here?

Lex Fridman (2:04:20.760)

That was a whole nother thing.

John Danaher (2:04:22.800)

With adrenaline, you can't really think that fast.

Lex Fridman (2:04:25.200)

But I also thought like, where else is there to go?

Lex Fridman (2:04:27.960)

Like, is it the shin going to break?

Lex Fridman (2:04:29.600)

What is it supposed to break?

Lex Fridman (2:04:31.080)

So I wondered that.

Lex Fridman (2:04:31.920)

Yeah, in the case of the Achilles lock,

John Danaher (2:04:33.440)

it's going to be the anterior tibialis tendon.

Lex Fridman (2:04:35.800)

What's that?

John Danaher (2:04:36.640)

That's the, it runs down, there's two of them.

Lex Fridman (2:04:39.160)

It'll be the minor one that runs on the outside

John Danaher (2:04:41.040)

of the front of the ankle.

Lex Fridman (2:04:42.760)

It's not going to be the Achilles tendon.

John Danaher (2:04:44.280)

A lot of people promulgate this absurdity.

Lex Fridman (2:04:47.920)

The Achilles tendon can rupture, but not from pressure.

Lex Fridman (2:04:51.480)

Does the tendon or the bone, it's going to break?

Lex Fridman (2:04:54.120)

The bone won't break.

John Danaher (2:04:56.040)

I have seen on one occasion,

Lex Fridman (2:04:57.920)

a shin bone break from an Achilles lock,

Lex Fridman (2:05:01.120)

but there was an enormous size and strength disparity.

Lex Fridman (2:05:04.520)

And there may have been other complicating factors too.

Lex Fridman (2:05:07.540)

But in the vast majority of cases,

Lex Fridman (2:05:11.480)

the Achilles lock doesn't really do tremendous damage.

John Danaher (2:05:15.000)

It can do significant damage.

Lex Fridman (2:05:17.080)

You'll definitely feel it the next day,

Lex Fridman (2:05:18.240)

but it's, of all the major locks,

Lex Fridman (2:05:20.800)

it's the one where it is most likely

John Danaher (2:05:23.400)

a psychologically strong opponent

Lex Fridman (2:05:25.120)

will be able to absorb damage and go on to win a match.

John Danaher (2:05:28.800)

In answer to your first question,

Lex Fridman (2:05:30.440)

how difficult is it to break a leg?

John Danaher (2:05:33.520)

Not very difficult.

Lex Fridman (2:05:34.480)

It will come down to what is the skill level

Lex Fridman (2:05:37.720)

of my opponent's resistance?

Lex Fridman (2:05:38.840)

If your opponent is not resisting

Lex Fridman (2:05:40.160)

and you have an inside heel hook,

Lex Fridman (2:05:41.280)

it is absurdly easy to break a man's leg.

John Danaher (2:05:44.080)

Not a challenge at all.

Lex Fridman (2:05:46.340)

You can be a 105 pound woman,

John Danaher (2:05:48.420)

could easily snap the relevant knee ligaments

Lex Fridman (2:05:54.680)

in a 240 pound man's leg

John Danaher (2:05:56.640)

if he doesn't know how to defend himself.

Lex Fridman (2:05:58.540)

That's an easy thing, very easy to accomplish.

Lex Fridman (2:06:02.000)

So the basic answer is yes, it's very easy.

Lex Fridman (2:06:06.160)

If your opponent does know how to defend

Lex Fridman (2:06:08.040)

and they can position their foot,

Lex Fridman (2:06:10.480)

play tricks of lever and fulcrum,

John Danaher (2:06:13.000)

it becomes significantly more difficult.

Lex Fridman (2:06:14.640)

It becomes still more difficult under match conditions

John Danaher (2:06:17.600)

where they're actively looking to position their body

Lex Fridman (2:06:21.240)

and work their way out of the lock,

John Danaher (2:06:23.640)

then it can become very difficult indeed.

Lex Fridman (2:06:26.040)

Always bear in mind that there have been some cases

John Danaher (2:06:32.180)

in our history as a team where people have literally

Lex Fridman (2:06:35.680)

just let their knees snap and continue fighting.

John Danaher (2:06:43.100)

Always remember that submission is a choice

Lex Fridman (2:06:45.760)

when it comes to the joint locks.

Lex Fridman (2:06:47.680)

And we've had some people who just made the choice

Lex Fridman (2:06:51.480)

that I'm willing to let my knee break

Lex Fridman (2:06:54.080)

so that I can continue in this match.

Lex Fridman (2:06:56.840)

That's a tough decision to make and I admire their bravery.

John Danaher (2:07:00.720)

Is there something about that,

Lex Fridman (2:07:02.160)

just to speak to that, that you admire?

John Danaher (2:07:04.920)

Yes, it's mental toughness.

Lex Fridman (2:07:07.440)

Would I agree with it, would I advocate it?

John Danaher (2:07:09.080)

No, but that doesn't mean I can't admire aspects of it.

Lex Fridman (2:07:14.320)

Who is the greatest grappler ever?

John Danaher (2:07:18.200)

You were very astute in the way you asked that question.

Lex Fridman (2:07:23.200)

You didn't say the greatest jiu jitsu player of all time,

John Danaher (2:07:26.680)

you specified grappler.

Lex Fridman (2:07:28.100)

What's the bigger category?

John Danaher (2:07:29.840)

Jiu jitsu is the bigger category.

Lex Fridman (2:07:31.520)

Jiu jitsu has four faces.

John Danaher (2:07:33.920)

There is gi competition, there is no gi competition,

Lex Fridman (2:07:37.720)

there is mixed martial arts competition,

Lex Fridman (2:07:40.120)

and there is self defense.

Lex Fridman (2:07:41.800)

So jiu jitsu has four aspects.

John Danaher (2:07:44.860)

Grappling typically refers only to the no gi

Lex Fridman (2:07:49.560)

aspect of jiu jitsu, so it's one out of four possibilities.

Lex Fridman (2:07:53.040)

So who's the greatest jiu jitsu practitioner ever,

Lex Fridman (2:07:56.480)

and then who is the greatest grappler ever?

John Danaher (2:07:58.920)

I believe that the greatest jiu jitsu player,

Lex Fridman (2:08:02.840)

certainly that I ever met, and I believe of all time,

John Danaher (2:08:05.480)

I don't want to sound arrogant on that

Lex Fridman (2:08:08.640)

because really you can only go with your own experiences

Lex Fridman (2:08:10.880)

and there are some great athletes that other people mention

Lex Fridman (2:08:13.600)

that I just never met.

John Danaher (2:08:15.000)

So, but in my estimation, the greatest jiu jitsu player

Lex Fridman (2:08:19.380)

is Haja Gracie, my reasoning for that is

John Danaher (2:08:25.480)

out of the four faces of jiu jitsu, he excelled in three.

Lex Fridman (2:08:31.400)

And in two of them in particular,

John Danaher (2:08:34.080)

he was the best of his generation by a landslide.

Lex Fridman (2:08:38.280)

In gi grappling, no gi grappling,

John Danaher (2:08:41.920)

Haja dominated his generation to a degree

Lex Fridman (2:08:46.400)

that is truly impressive.

Lex Fridman (2:08:51.600)

What do you attribute that dominance to, by the way?

Lex Fridman (2:08:53.400)

Is there something, if you were to analyze him?

John Danaher (2:08:56.000)

Fascinating question, I'll come back to it.

Lex Fridman (2:08:58.840)

In mixed martial arts, he was at his peak,

John Danaher (2:09:03.520)

I believe ranked in the top 10

Lex Fridman (2:09:05.800)

in the world of mixed martial arts.

John Danaher (2:09:09.400)

He wasn't the best in mixed martial arts

Lex Fridman (2:09:11.880)

the way he was in grappling, but he was damn good.

Lex Fridman (2:09:14.280)

And he beat some significant people.

Lex Fridman (2:09:17.160)

So he showed tremendous versatility,

John Danaher (2:09:19.560)

gi, no gi, mixed martial arts.

Lex Fridman (2:09:21.800)

He's not really known in the world of self defense,

Lex Fridman (2:09:24.000)

but there's no real criteria by which

Lex Fridman (2:09:26.280)

you would become dominant in self defense.

Lex Fridman (2:09:28.120)

So that's kind of a, you can't really judge people by that.

Lex Fridman (2:09:31.520)

Believe me, if Haja got into a fight in the street,

John Danaher (2:09:34.080)

I'm sure he would do just fine.

Lex Fridman (2:09:36.160)

So I have no concerns about that.

Lex Fridman (2:09:40.240)

So I would say that if you look at jiu jitsu

Lex Fridman (2:09:42.600)

for what I believe it is, a sport with four faces,

John Danaher (2:09:46.280)

I believe you have to go with Haja Gracie

Lex Fridman (2:09:50.000)

as the one who went out and empirically proved

John Danaher (2:09:53.800)

his ability to go across those elements

Lex Fridman (2:09:58.360)

and do extraordinarily well in all of them.

John Danaher (2:10:01.200)

He even made the extraordinary step

Lex Fridman (2:10:04.100)

of coming out of retirement and beating the best

John Danaher (2:10:06.900)

of the generation that came after him.

Lex Fridman (2:10:09.520)

That's Asha?

John Danaher (2:10:10.360)

Yes, that's a truly difficult feat.

Lex Fridman (2:10:11.920)

That was incredible.

John Danaher (2:10:12.760)

Yeah, and a sport which progresses very, very rapidly,

Lex Fridman (2:10:15.160)

that's a truly impressive accomplishment.

John Danaher (2:10:18.360)

If you ask the question who is the greatest grappler

Lex Fridman (2:10:22.400)

that I've ever seen, I would say I've never seen

John Danaher (2:10:26.880)

anyone better than Gordon Ryan.

Lex Fridman (2:10:29.400)

Now people are gonna jump when I give these two names.

John Danaher (2:10:32.680)

They're gonna say, well, Dan, you're close friends

Lex Fridman (2:10:34.880)

with Haja and you're close friends with Gordon,

Lex Fridman (2:10:37.640)

so you're biased.

Lex Fridman (2:10:38.620)

I can't answer them to that, it's true.

John Danaher (2:10:42.780)

I'm good friends with both of them.

Lex Fridman (2:10:45.540)

I'm also a notoriously cold and unemotional person

Lex Fridman (2:10:49.780)

and I'm saying this based upon things that I've observed.

Lex Fridman (2:10:54.780)

If I honestly believed that I'd seen other people

John Danaher (2:10:57.700)

who were better, I would have said it.

Lex Fridman (2:11:02.020)

Will that convince the people who criticize me

John Danaher (2:11:06.180)

are biased, probably not, but those are the two names

Lex Fridman (2:11:08.600)

that I will mention.

John Danaher (2:11:09.440)

I think it's an uncontroversial statement to say

Lex Fridman (2:11:11.620)

that Gordon Ryan is one of the greatest grappler ever.

John Danaher (2:11:17.220)

Yeah, Gordon's obviously a very polarizing figure

Lex Fridman (2:11:19.740)

and people tend to react to Gordon on an emotional level

John Danaher (2:11:23.460)

rather than a statistical level

Lex Fridman (2:11:26.700)

and that colors a lot of people's minds,

Lex Fridman (2:11:29.060)

but I also have the benefit that I've seen both

Lex Fridman (2:11:31.740)

of these guys extensively in the gym

Lex Fridman (2:11:33.660)

and that adds a whole new perspective.

Lex Fridman (2:11:36.420)

If you think those guys are dominant on the stage,

John Danaher (2:11:40.060)

wait till you see them in the gym.

Lex Fridman (2:11:41.380)

It's even a different level of domination

John Danaher (2:11:43.420)

above and beyond what they did in competition.

Lex Fridman (2:11:47.520)

Have they trained against each other in the gym?

John Danaher (2:11:50.140)

No, they never trained together.

Lex Fridman (2:11:51.100)

They've been in the same gym, I think, only on one occasion.

John Danaher (2:11:53.640)

When Hodger was stopped by New York,

Lex Fridman (2:11:55.420)

he came by to say hello and Gordon was here at the time.

John Danaher (2:11:59.380)

They shake hands, they know each other

Lex Fridman (2:12:01.580)

and they're both wonderful people in their own way.

Lex Fridman (2:12:04.900)

So I'd like to talk to you about Gordon,

Lex Fridman (2:12:08.300)

Hodger and George GSP.

John Danaher (2:12:13.180)

Let's first talk about what do you think,

Lex Fridman (2:12:14.940)

because it's very different from my perspective,

John Danaher (2:12:17.260)

maybe you can correct me, but very different artists,

Lex Fridman (2:12:21.900)

masters of their pursuits.

Lex Fridman (2:12:24.500)

So what makes Hodger so good?

Lex Fridman (2:12:28.320)

Hodger was probably the living embodiment

John Danaher (2:12:32.180)

of someone who played a classical jiu jitsu game

Lex Fridman (2:12:36.780)

based around the fundamental four steps of jiu jitsu.

Lex Fridman (2:12:40.820)

And like if you took someone

Lex Fridman (2:12:44.660)

who had taken introduction lessons in jiu jitsu

John Danaher (2:12:49.460)

for three months, they would recognize the outlines

Lex Fridman (2:12:55.140)

of Hodger's game with many of the techniques

John Danaher (2:12:59.180)

they learned in those first three months.

Lex Fridman (2:13:02.540)

Hodger was the best example of the dichotomy

John Danaher (2:13:06.700)

between the fundamentals of jiu jitsu,

Lex Fridman (2:13:09.980)

but also a kind of hidden sophistication

John Danaher (2:13:13.420)

underneath those fundamentals.

Lex Fridman (2:13:17.600)

People always say, oh, Hodger's game was so basic.

John Danaher (2:13:20.700)

No, the outlines of Hodger's game were basic,

Lex Fridman (2:13:24.480)

but the degree of sophistication

Lex Fridman (2:13:26.220)

and the application was extraordinary, and his ability

Lex Fridman (2:13:32.260)

to refine existing technology was truly impressive.

John Danaher (2:13:39.660)

I never saw anyone in his generation

Lex Fridman (2:13:42.540)

that even came close to his ability,

John Danaher (2:13:45.160)

both in competition and in the gym.

Lex Fridman (2:13:49.340)

So for people who don't know,

John Danaher (2:13:50.740)

Hodger Gracie basically used, just like you said,

Lex Fridman (2:13:53.140)

a very simple techniques on the surface

John Danaher (2:13:57.700)

from the outsider's perspective that most people learn

Lex Fridman (2:14:02.300)

when they start jiu jitsu, like passing guard

John Danaher (2:14:05.420)

in a very simple way, taking mount and choking from mount.

Lex Fridman (2:14:09.840)

Also, when he's on his back, it's closed guard

Lex Fridman (2:14:13.580)

and all the basic submissions from closed guard,

Lex Fridman (2:14:15.580)

arm bar and triangle, and just, that's it.

Lex Fridman (2:14:20.580)

And being able to dominate, shut down, and submit.

Lex Fridman (2:14:25.980)

So control and submit the best people in the world

John Danaher (2:14:29.420)

for many, many years, just like you said,

Lex Fridman (2:14:32.420)

including coming out of retirement and beating the best,

John Danaher (2:14:37.520)

perhaps by far the best of the next generation.

Lex Fridman (2:14:40.540)

So that just kind of lays out the story.

John Danaher (2:14:43.020)

Is there some lessons about his systems

Lex Fridman (2:14:48.020)

that you learn in developing your own systems?

John Danaher (2:14:52.420)

Excellent question.

Lex Fridman (2:14:54.420)

The thing which always impressed me the most about Hodger

John Danaher (2:14:58.420)

was his relentless pursuit of position to submission.

Lex Fridman (2:15:05.660)

Everything was done with the belief

John Danaher (2:15:09.960)

that no victory was worthwhile

Lex Fridman (2:15:14.140)

if it didn't involve submitting his opponent.

John Danaher (2:15:16.920)

That's a mindset that I tried very, very hard

Lex Fridman (2:15:20.020)

to imbue in my students.

John Danaher (2:15:22.040)

The easiest path to victory in jiu jitsu

Lex Fridman (2:15:24.180)

is the one which takes the least risk.

Lex Fridman (2:15:27.340)

So for example, you will see many modern athletes

Lex Fridman (2:15:30.480)

focus on scoring the first point or the first advantage,

Lex Fridman (2:15:34.020)

and then doing the minimum amount of work

Lex Fridman (2:15:36.700)

to eke out a victory once they've done that.

John Danaher (2:15:40.380)

They get a small tactical advantage,

Lex Fridman (2:15:42.260)

they realize they're ahead, take no more risks,

Lex Fridman (2:15:44.780)

and just do the minimum amount of work to get the victory.

Lex Fridman (2:15:49.100)

Hodger's mindset was always to take

John Danaher (2:15:52.220)

the riskier gambit of submission,

Lex Fridman (2:15:54.940)

which entails a lot more work,

Lex Fridman (2:15:56.780)

and in many cases, a lot more skill.

Lex Fridman (2:16:01.380)

What I always liked about Hodger

John Danaher (2:16:03.020)

is he never tried to play tactics.

Lex Fridman (2:16:05.900)

It was always just go out there

Lex Fridman (2:16:08.620)

and try to win by submission.

Lex Fridman (2:16:11.340)

And that more than anything,

John Danaher (2:16:14.180)

that mindset of looking for the most perfect victory

Lex Fridman (2:16:19.620)

rather than the victory that takes the least skill

Lex Fridman (2:16:23.100)

and the least effort is probably the thing

Lex Fridman (2:16:26.860)

I took from his career the most

Lex Fridman (2:16:28.760)

and tried to work on in my students.

Lex Fridman (2:16:32.560)

I always wonder what are the little details

John Danaher (2:16:35.440)

he's doing under there when he's in mount,

Lex Fridman (2:16:38.100)

the little adjustments.

Lex Fridman (2:16:39.900)

But perhaps that's almost indescribable,

Lex Fridman (2:16:43.200)

the details of that control.

Lex Fridman (2:16:47.500)

What makes Gordon Ryan, the greatest grappler of all time,

Lex Fridman (2:16:52.660)

so good?

John Danaher (2:16:53.940)

With Gordon, he's also very strong on fundamentals,

Lex Fridman (2:16:56.620)

all of my students are,

Lex Fridman (2:16:58.100)

but he's also obviously a member

Lex Fridman (2:17:01.580)

of a new generation of no geek grapplers

John Danaher (2:17:04.060)

that also bring in technologies

Lex Fridman (2:17:06.500)

that weren't really emphasized

John Danaher (2:17:09.660)

in previous generations specifically.

Lex Fridman (2:17:12.200)

The prolific use of lower body attacks,

John Danaher (2:17:16.660)

especially from bottom position.

Lex Fridman (2:17:20.340)

This means that he can play a game

John Danaher (2:17:22.300)

between upper body and lower body,

Lex Fridman (2:17:24.940)

which was not really a part of Hodges game.

John Danaher (2:17:29.300)

Nonetheless, you will also see significant similarities.

Lex Fridman (2:17:32.380)

He's got a very strong and crushing passing game to mount

Lex Fridman (2:17:35.860)

and a very strong and crushing passing game to the back.

Lex Fridman (2:17:42.700)

You will see that the major differences

John Danaher (2:17:46.660)

between the two are from bottom position.

Lex Fridman (2:17:49.100)

Hodges bottom game is essentially based

John Danaher (2:17:51.060)

around his close guard.

Lex Fridman (2:17:52.340)

Gordon Ryan's game is based around his butterfly guard.

Lex Fridman (2:17:55.420)

So one is based on outside control

Lex Fridman (2:17:57.420)

and one is based on inside control.

John Danaher (2:18:00.060)

One focuses almost entirely on the classical notion

Lex Fridman (2:18:03.180)

of getting past the legs to the upper body

Lex Fridman (2:18:05.840)

and the other one works between the two as alternatives

Lex Fridman (2:18:08.380)

and sees them as competing alternatives

John Danaher (2:18:10.640)

where the stronger you become at one,

Lex Fridman (2:18:12.540)

the more your opponent has to overreact

Lex Fridman (2:18:14.220)

and become vulnerable to the second.

Lex Fridman (2:18:16.180)

So they have strong similarities in top position

Lex Fridman (2:18:19.260)

but are very different in bottom.

Lex Fridman (2:18:22.300)

He has, from an outsider's perspective,

John Danaher (2:18:25.520)

a calm to him in the heat of battle

Lex Fridman (2:18:30.520)

that's inspiring and confusing.

John Danaher (2:18:35.380)

Is there something you could speak

Lex Fridman (2:18:37.500)

to the psychological aspect of Gordon Ryan?

John Danaher (2:18:40.700)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (2:18:42.980)

People will talk all day about sports psychology

Lex Fridman (2:18:47.560)

and they will often have heated arguments

Lex Fridman (2:18:52.180)

as to what's the right psychological state to be in

John Danaher (2:18:55.000)

when you go out to compete.

Lex Fridman (2:18:56.680)

I've never seen any one school of thought

John Danaher (2:18:59.380)

which gave noticeably better sports performance than another.

Lex Fridman (2:19:03.160)

I've never seen any psychological mindset

John Danaher (2:19:07.320)

prove to be reliably more efficient

Lex Fridman (2:19:11.040)

or effective than another.

John Danaher (2:19:13.880)

I've seen fighters that were scared out of their minds

Lex Fridman (2:19:17.280)

when they went out every time to fight

Lex Fridman (2:19:19.200)

and yet they were very successful.

Lex Fridman (2:19:20.980)

I've seen fighters go out who were relaxed and calm

Lex Fridman (2:19:23.980)

and they too can be successful.

Lex Fridman (2:19:25.760)

I've seen both mindsets win, I've seen both mindsets lose.

John Danaher (2:19:29.180)

I've seen every extreme between them.

Lex Fridman (2:19:31.060)

What I generally recommend

John Danaher (2:19:32.580)

with regards your mind and preparation going in,

Lex Fridman (2:19:36.460)

find what works for you.

John Danaher (2:19:37.980)

Everyone's different.

Lex Fridman (2:19:39.260)

Don't try to give a one size fits all

John Danaher (2:19:41.420)

in something as vague and confusing as the human mind.

Lex Fridman (2:19:47.460)

Having said that, my preference,

John Danaher (2:19:50.620)

I don't force it on people because everyone's different,

Lex Fridman (2:19:53.220)

but my preference is to try and advocate

John Danaher (2:19:56.540)

for a mindset of unexceptionalism.

Lex Fridman (2:20:00.020)

Most people see competition as something exceptional.

John Danaher (2:20:03.340)

It's not your everyday grappling session.

Lex Fridman (2:20:05.540)

You train 300 times for every time you compete

Lex Fridman (2:20:08.980)

and so they see competition as something exceptional,

Lex Fridman (2:20:11.700)

different, scarier, more nerve wracking.

John Danaher (2:20:14.260)

There's a crowd watching, there's cameras.

Lex Fridman (2:20:16.460)

My reputation is on the line.

John Danaher (2:20:17.820)

I'm gonna be observed and judged

Lex Fridman (2:20:20.060)

and so they see it as this exceptional event.

John Danaher (2:20:22.980)

My general preference is to see it

Lex Fridman (2:20:25.060)

as an unexceptional event, to see everything else,

John Danaher (2:20:28.700)

the noise, the cameras, the crowd as illusions.

Lex Fridman (2:20:34.140)

The only reality is a stage,

John Danaher (2:20:36.020)

an opponent on the other side of it

Lex Fridman (2:20:37.620)

and a referee adjudicating you

Lex Fridman (2:20:39.820)

and to make it as unexceptional as possible.

Lex Fridman (2:20:43.700)

Gordon does an extraordinarily good job of doing that.

John Danaher (2:20:48.540)

Gordon looks more tense in most of his training sessions

Lex Fridman (2:20:52.380)

than he does in his competitions

John Danaher (2:20:54.060)

because he knows his training partners

Lex Fridman (2:20:55.540)

are typically better than the people

John Danaher (2:20:57.540)

he's actually going out to compete against.

Lex Fridman (2:21:01.580)

And you see it in his demeanor.

John Danaher (2:21:03.420)

It's one of just complete calm.

Lex Fridman (2:21:06.100)

It also goes back to what we talked about earlier

John Danaher (2:21:08.740)

about the power of escapes.

Lex Fridman (2:21:11.180)

Gordon Ryan is almost impossible to control

John Danaher (2:21:13.820)

for extended periods of time

Lex Fridman (2:21:16.260)

in most of the inferior positions in the sport

Lex Fridman (2:21:19.220)

and most of the submissions.

Lex Fridman (2:21:21.260)

So he goes out in the full knowledge

John Danaher (2:21:23.380)

that the worst case scenario isn't that bad for him

Lex Fridman (2:21:27.340)

and so nothing could really go that badly wrong.

John Danaher (2:21:29.900)

He can always recover from any given mistake

Lex Fridman (2:21:32.300)

and go on to victory.

John Danaher (2:21:33.860)

When you believe those things,

Lex Fridman (2:21:35.420)

you're gonna have a calm demeanor.

John Danaher (2:21:37.660)

Then if you look at somebody who is quite a bit different

Lex Fridman (2:21:41.380)

than that, George St. Pierre,

John Danaher (2:21:43.940)

who at least in the way he describes it,

Lex Fridman (2:21:46.740)

he's basically exceptionally anxious

Lex Fridman (2:21:50.300)

and terrified approaching a fight

Lex Fridman (2:21:53.540)

and he loves training.

Lex Fridman (2:21:56.060)

And hates fighting.

Lex Fridman (2:21:56.980)

And hates fighting.

Lex Fridman (2:21:58.500)

So and just like you said, he made it work for him.

Lex Fridman (2:22:02.300)

But he's somebody, he speaks very highly of you.

John Danaher (2:22:06.060)

He's worked with you quite a bit in training.

Lex Fridman (2:22:10.580)

And you've studied him.

John Danaher (2:22:11.940)

You've worked with him.

Lex Fridman (2:22:13.580)

You've coached him.

John Danaher (2:22:15.540)

Interesting, I've actually coached George

Lex Fridman (2:22:17.180)

for twice the length of any of the squad members.

Lex Fridman (2:22:20.140)

So my knowledge of him is far greater than it is

Lex Fridman (2:22:23.460)

for the contemporary squad.

Lex Fridman (2:22:26.260)

So can you speak to what makes George St. Pierre,

Lex Fridman (2:22:29.100)

who I think even though I'm Russian

Lex Fridman (2:22:31.900)

and a little bit partial towards Fedor and the Russians,

Lex Fridman (2:22:35.460)

but I think he is in the four categories you mentioned,

John Danaher (2:22:39.300)

the greatest mixed martial artist of all time.

Lex Fridman (2:22:43.060)

What makes him so good?

John Danaher (2:22:44.940)

His approach, his techniques, his mind.

Lex Fridman (2:22:48.300)

His approach is certainly part of it.

John Danaher (2:22:50.260)

George started mixed martial arts at a time when the sport

Lex Fridman (2:22:57.020)

was in a pretty wild phase.

John Danaher (2:23:00.460)

It was illegal to show on most American TV networks.

Lex Fridman (2:23:04.700)

And there was talk about it being banned as a sport.

John Danaher (2:23:09.940)

In his native Canada, it was banned.

Lex Fridman (2:23:12.340)

You could only fight on Indian reservations in Canada.

John Danaher (2:23:15.700)

I believe his first fight may have

Lex Fridman (2:23:17.420)

been on an Indian reservation.

Lex Fridman (2:23:20.700)

So the sport at that stage was very much in its infancy.

Lex Fridman (2:23:26.260)

And it's probably fair to say that most

John Danaher (2:23:28.820)

of the athletes involved in the sport

Lex Fridman (2:23:31.740)

came from a training program that would probably

John Danaher (2:23:37.860)

describe as unprofessional in the contemporary scene.

Lex Fridman (2:23:45.620)

George is one of a handful of people

John Danaher (2:23:48.180)

who started approaching the sport in a truly

Lex Fridman (2:23:50.460)

professional fashion.

John Danaher (2:23:51.580)

It was like, OK, here's what great athletes

Lex Fridman (2:23:53.700)

in other sports do.

John Danaher (2:23:54.900)

I'm going to try to emulate that.

Lex Fridman (2:23:57.020)

And his ability to invest in himself.

John Danaher (2:24:04.100)

In my own experience, for example,

Lex Fridman (2:24:06.100)

George, when I first met him, was a garbage man.

Lex Fridman (2:24:10.140)

And he would jump on a bus from Montreal to New York.

Lex Fridman (2:24:15.180)

Now, that's a long bus ride.

John Danaher (2:24:16.860)

He would come down on a Friday afternoon

Lex Fridman (2:24:18.700)

when he finished work as a garbage man,

John Danaher (2:24:20.740)

stay for the weekend, and then late on Sunday night,

Lex Fridman (2:24:22.900)

he would jump on a bus all the way back to Montreal

Lex Fridman (2:24:24.940)

and work as a garbage man.

Lex Fridman (2:24:28.340)

That's an extraordinary commitment

John Danaher (2:24:30.980)

for a young man to make.

Lex Fridman (2:24:34.860)

And George was a blue belt at the time.

Lex Fridman (2:24:38.660)

And so he would come down.

Lex Fridman (2:24:39.660)

And we had a very talented room.

Lex Fridman (2:24:42.500)

So he didn't do well in the room when he first came in.

Lex Fridman (2:24:46.020)

He was inexperienced in jiu jitsu.

Lex Fridman (2:24:47.620)

And the people who went against were considerably better

Lex Fridman (2:24:52.540)

than him at jiu jitsu.

Lex Fridman (2:24:53.420)

So imagine investing 25% of your weekly income, maybe even more.

Lex Fridman (2:24:59.980)

New York's an expensive town, 50%,

John Danaher (2:25:03.180)

to come down and just get your ass kicked month by month.

Lex Fridman (2:25:07.700)

Yeah, that says a lot about who he is.

John Danaher (2:25:09.740)

Tells you a lot.

Lex Fridman (2:25:11.300)

First of all, let's talk about the whole idea

John Danaher (2:25:13.380)

of delayed gratification here.

Lex Fridman (2:25:14.940)

I mean, that's a guy who's saying,

John Danaher (2:25:17.540)

this is highly unpleasant.

Lex Fridman (2:25:19.340)

But I have a vision of myself in the future.

Lex Fridman (2:25:22.220)

And I have to go through this extreme case

Lex Fridman (2:25:24.860)

of delayed gratification to get to that distant goal, which

John Danaher (2:25:27.780)

may never happen.

Lex Fridman (2:25:29.380)

And that's a level of commitment and self belief,

John Danaher (2:25:33.300)

which is just extraordinary.

Lex Fridman (2:25:35.700)

I always laugh when people say, oh, George was afraid,

Lex Fridman (2:25:38.340)

so he was mentally weak.

Lex Fridman (2:25:41.100)

No, that's a very, very shallow understanding

John Danaher (2:25:45.420)

of mental strength and weakness.

Lex Fridman (2:25:50.020)

George felt anxiety.

Lex Fridman (2:25:53.260)

But let's understand from the start,

Lex Fridman (2:25:55.580)

there's different kinds of mental strength.

Lex Fridman (2:25:57.980)

And the most important kind isn't

Lex Fridman (2:26:00.060)

whether you feel fear or don't feel fear

John Danaher (2:26:02.420)

before you step into fight.

Lex Fridman (2:26:03.860)

The most important form of mental strength

John Danaher (2:26:07.300)

is discipline and training.

Lex Fridman (2:26:09.700)

That's where most people break.

John Danaher (2:26:11.660)

I know dozens of people who are fearless to fight,

Lex Fridman (2:26:14.980)

but you couldn't get them to come into the gym

John Danaher (2:26:16.900)

for three months in a row and work on skills.

Lex Fridman (2:26:19.900)

So they're mentally strong one way, they don't feel fear.

Lex Fridman (2:26:22.700)

But they're mentally weak in another,

Lex Fridman (2:26:24.380)

which is to instill the discipline which keeps you

John Danaher (2:26:26.980)

on a road to progress over time.

Lex Fridman (2:26:29.060)

That's much tougher than not feeling fear

John Danaher (2:26:31.380)

before you go out to fight.

Lex Fridman (2:26:33.180)

Understand also that when George talks about fear,

John Danaher (2:26:36.380)

he's not afraid of his opponent.

Lex Fridman (2:26:39.180)

He's afraid of failure.

John Danaher (2:26:43.140)

He's got high standards.

Lex Fridman (2:26:45.780)

Someone who's got high standards can change the world.

John Danaher (2:26:50.860)

His standards were very, very high.

Lex Fridman (2:26:52.820)

That's what he was afraid of.

John Danaher (2:26:54.180)

He wasn't afraid of his opponents.

Lex Fridman (2:26:56.700)

And yet, that's always been the misinterpretation.

John Danaher (2:26:58.980)

He wasn't mentally weak.

Lex Fridman (2:26:59.940)

He was mentally strong as an ox.

John Danaher (2:27:02.540)

To stay in his training regimen year after year after year

Lex Fridman (2:27:08.380)

and do so while he became one of the first stars

John Danaher (2:27:10.700)

in mixed martial arts to actually make money.

Lex Fridman (2:27:13.820)

And it gets tough to stay in the training gym

John Danaher (2:27:16.300)

with people who are young and hungry

Lex Fridman (2:27:18.060)

and want to punch you in the face.

John Danaher (2:27:19.740)

You're coming out of a luxury room,

Lex Fridman (2:27:21.700)

living in finery towards the end of his career

Lex Fridman (2:27:24.580)

and still training as hard as ever.

Lex Fridman (2:27:26.060)

That's an impressive thing.

Lex Fridman (2:27:28.460)

And always he valued perfection.

Lex Fridman (2:27:30.300)

And you're right, the fear was not achieving the perfection.

John Danaher (2:27:34.260)

Is there something you've observed

Lex Fridman (2:27:39.740)

about the way he approaches training that stands out to you?

Lex Fridman (2:27:46.260)

Or is it simply the dedication?

Lex Fridman (2:27:48.020)

No, it's never just about dedication.

John Danaher (2:27:49.980)

There's lots of dedicated people in the world,

Lex Fridman (2:27:51.620)

but most of them are unsuccessful.

John Danaher (2:27:56.860)

If you want to be the best in the world at anything,

Lex Fridman (2:28:01.900)

you have to do, out of the many skills of whatever industry

John Danaher (2:28:06.580)

you're in, you have to take at least one of those skills

Lex Fridman (2:28:13.100)

and be the best in the world at it.

John Danaher (2:28:18.140)

There's many skills in mixed martial arts.

Lex Fridman (2:28:21.700)

But George identified one skill, which

John Danaher (2:28:25.100)

is the skill of striking to take downs.

Lex Fridman (2:28:28.100)

He calls it shootboxing.

John Danaher (2:28:32.940)

Shootboxing was barely even a category of skill

Lex Fridman (2:28:37.660)

when George began.

John Danaher (2:28:38.540)

It was just the idea that wrestlers grabbed people

Lex Fridman (2:28:40.900)

and took them down the same way they did in wrestling.

Lex Fridman (2:28:44.060)

And you threw some punches before you did it.

Lex Fridman (2:28:48.780)

George largely pioneered the science

John Danaher (2:28:56.980)

of creating an interface between striking and take downs.

Lex Fridman (2:29:02.340)

He did it at a time where no one else before him

John Danaher (2:29:08.140)

had made it into a system or a science.

Lex Fridman (2:29:11.740)

He did it largely on his own.

Lex Fridman (2:29:14.540)

And I've always said George is the only athlete

Lex Fridman (2:29:20.980)

that I ever coached who taught me more than I taught him.

Lex Fridman (2:29:25.540)

And almost singlehandedly, he created this strong sense

Lex Fridman (2:29:35.580)

of shootboxing as a science, which

John Danaher (2:29:38.700)

enabled him throughout his career

Lex Fridman (2:29:41.180)

to determine where the fight would take place.

Lex Fridman (2:29:44.500)

Would it be standing, or would it be on the ground?

Lex Fridman (2:29:47.460)

And that, more than anything else,

John Danaher (2:29:49.340)

was the defining characteristic of his success.

Lex Fridman (2:29:51.540)

I will always be immensely impressed

John Danaher (2:29:55.180)

by his accomplishment in that regard.

Lex Fridman (2:29:57.220)

He was an innovator.

John Danaher (2:29:58.300)

He did things differently.

Lex Fridman (2:30:00.420)

This is such an important point.

John Danaher (2:30:02.180)

You can't go out there in combat sports

Lex Fridman (2:30:05.260)

and do the same things that everybody else is doing

Lex Fridman (2:30:08.420)

and expect to get different results.

Lex Fridman (2:30:11.660)

Life doesn't work that way.

John Danaher (2:30:13.460)

If you want to be dominant, you've

Lex Fridman (2:30:15.340)

got to find one important part of the sport,

Lex Fridman (2:30:17.740)

and preferably more important than the rest of the sport,

Lex Fridman (2:30:20.740)

and preferably more than one, and be the best in the world

John Danaher (2:30:23.980)

at it.

Lex Fridman (2:30:24.580)

You can't be weak at anything, but you can't be strong

John Danaher (2:30:27.700)

at everything either.

Lex Fridman (2:30:28.620)

Life's not long enough for us to develop

John Danaher (2:30:30.220)

a truly complete skill set.

Lex Fridman (2:30:32.460)

So you've got to be good at everything,

Lex Fridman (2:30:34.140)

and you've got to be the best at at least one thing.

Lex Fridman (2:30:36.620)

And George was the best at two.

John Danaher (2:30:38.780)

In his era, he was the best at striking to takedowns,

Lex Fridman (2:30:43.420)

and he was the best at integrating striking

Lex Fridman (2:30:45.660)

and grappling on the floor.

Lex Fridman (2:30:49.260)

Let me ask you a completely ridiculous question,

Lex Fridman (2:30:52.300)

but it's a fascinating one for me

Lex Fridman (2:30:54.860)

from an engineering and a scientific perspective.

John Danaher (2:30:58.500)

When I look at a sport, really any problem,

Lex Fridman (2:31:02.620)

one way to ask how difficult is this problem

John Danaher (2:31:07.860)

is to see how can I build a machine that competes

Lex Fridman (2:31:11.580)

with a human being at that problem.

John Danaher (2:31:13.340)

You can look at chess.

Lex Fridman (2:31:14.940)

You can look at soccer, Robocup,

Lex Fridman (2:31:20.180)

and then you can look at grappling.

Lex Fridman (2:31:22.740)

There's something about when you start to think,

Lex Fridman (2:31:25.580)

how would I build an AI system, a robot that defeats somebody

Lex Fridman (2:31:30.140)

like a Gordon Ryan, where it forces you to really think

John Danaher (2:31:34.340)

about formalizing this art as an engineering discipline

Lex Fridman (2:31:41.540)

in the same way you do, but you still have some art

John Danaher (2:31:45.140)

injected in there.

Lex Fridman (2:31:46.540)

There's no space for art when you actually have

John Danaher (2:31:48.740)

to build the system.

Lex Fridman (2:31:49.580)

That's not a ridiculous question.

John Danaher (2:31:50.940)

That's a damn interesting question.

Lex Fridman (2:31:52.820)

Let's put aside, like I mentioned

John Danaher (2:31:55.740)

with the Boston Dynamics spot robots,

Lex Fridman (2:31:58.060)

what people don't realize is the amount of power

John Danaher (2:32:01.300)

they can deliver is huge.

Lex Fridman (2:32:02.620)

So let's take that weapon aside,

John Danaher (2:32:04.940)

just the amount of force you're able to deliver.

Lex Fridman (2:32:07.540)

Yeah, I'm glad you're specifying that.

Lex Fridman (2:32:10.100)

So essentially, your question is, can a talented group

Lex Fridman (2:32:16.020)

of engineers create a robot which could defeat Gordon Ryan?

John Danaher (2:32:18.940)

On the face of it, as you just pointed out,

Lex Fridman (2:32:22.740)

that's the easiest project in the world,

John Danaher (2:32:24.580)

just create a robot that carries a nine millimeter automatic

Lex Fridman (2:32:27.060)

and shoot them five times in the chest.

John Danaher (2:32:28.420)

Okay, that's it, Gordon Ryan's done.

Lex Fridman (2:32:30.500)

So that's not the interesting question.

John Danaher (2:32:32.300)

The interesting question, and if I understand you correctly,

Lex Fridman (2:32:35.380)

is if we had the ability to create a robot

John Danaher (2:32:41.380)

whose physical powers were identical to Gordon Ryan,

Lex Fridman (2:32:45.100)

not inferior and not superior, what would it take

John Danaher (2:32:49.380)

to create a mind inside that robot that would beat

Lex Fridman (2:32:51.900)

Gordon Ryan in the majority of matches?

John Danaher (2:32:53.580)

Yeah, and there's two ways to build AI systems.

Lex Fridman (2:32:56.780)

This is true for autonomous driving, for example,

John Danaher (2:33:00.380)

which has been quite contested recently.

Lex Fridman (2:33:03.300)

So one is you basically, one way to describe it

John Danaher (2:33:06.100)

is you have a giant set of rules.

Lex Fridman (2:33:09.220)

It's like this tree of rules where you apply

John Danaher (2:33:12.260)

in different condition when there's a pattern you see,

Lex Fridman (2:33:14.340)

you apply a rule and they're hard coded in.

John Danaher (2:33:17.180)

You basically get like a John Donr type of character

Lex Fridman (2:33:20.460)

who tries to encode, hard code into the system,

John Danaher (2:33:26.460)

all the moves you should do in every single case.

Lex Fridman (2:33:29.660)

Of course, you can't actually do that fully.

Lex Fridman (2:33:32.420)

So you're going to be taking shortcuts,

Lex Fridman (2:33:34.980)

what are called heuristics,

John Danaher (2:33:36.820)

just a basic kind of generalizations

Lex Fridman (2:33:41.020)

and apply your own expertise as an expert of,

John Danaher (2:33:44.980)

in this case, grappling,

Lex Fridman (2:33:47.020)

to see how that can be coded as a rule.

John Danaher (2:33:49.060)

Now, the other approach,

Lex Fridman (2:33:50.780)

Elon Musk and Tesla are taking this approach,

John Danaher (2:33:53.220)

which is called machine learning,

Lex Fridman (2:33:55.420)

which is create a basic framework

John Danaher (2:34:01.820)

of the kind of things you should be observing

Lex Fridman (2:34:05.180)

and what are the measures, metrics of success,

Lex Fridman (2:34:09.620)

and then just observe and see which things lead to success,

Lex Fridman (2:34:13.820)

more success and which lead to less success.

Lex Fridman (2:34:16.100)

And there's a delta.

Lex Fridman (2:34:17.900)

Like when you see a thing,

John Danaher (2:34:20.580)

first of all, the way machine learning works

Lex Fridman (2:34:22.500)

is you predict, you see a position or you see a situation

Lex Fridman (2:34:26.740)

and then you predict how good that is

Lex Fridman (2:34:28.860)

and then you watch how it actually turns out

Lex Fridman (2:34:31.180)

and if it's worse or better, you adjust your expectations.

Lex Fridman (2:34:34.940)

And through that process, you can learn quite a lot.

John Danaher (2:34:39.900)

The challenge is,

Lex Fridman (2:34:43.020)

and this might be a very true challenge in grappling,

John Danaher (2:34:46.740)

is like in driving, you can't crash.

Lex Fridman (2:34:52.900)

So there's a physical world.

John Danaher (2:34:55.500)

In chess, for example,

Lex Fridman (2:34:56.940)

where this approach has been exceptionally successful,

John Danaher (2:35:00.860)

you can work in simulation.

Lex Fridman (2:35:02.540)

So you can have AI system that, for example,

John Danaher (2:35:07.660)

as in the case with AlphaZero by DeepMind,

Lex Fridman (2:35:10.180)

Google's DeepMind,

John Danaher (2:35:11.780)

it can play itself in simulation millions of times,

Lex Fridman (2:35:14.940)

billions of times.

John Danaher (2:35:16.900)

It's difficult to know if it's possible to do that

Lex Fridman (2:35:19.980)

in simulation for anything that involves human movement,

John Danaher (2:35:25.220)

like grappling.

Lex Fridman (2:35:28.260)

So that's, my sense is,

John Danaher (2:35:31.620)

if we first look at the hard encoding,

Lex Fridman (2:35:34.660)

if you were to try to describe Gordon Ryan to a machine,

Lex Fridman (2:35:39.420)

how many rules are in there, do you think?

Lex Fridman (2:35:41.340)

Yeah, first off, let me tell you,

John Danaher (2:35:43.980)

that's one of the most fascinating questions

Lex Fridman (2:35:45.540)

I've ever been asked.

Lex Fridman (2:35:46.380)

And I'm tremendously happy to answer this.

Lex Fridman (2:35:51.220)

How about what we do is,

John Danaher (2:35:52.780)

this is a massive question you've asked.

Lex Fridman (2:35:55.340)

There's a huge amount of ways

John Danaher (2:35:56.780)

this could get very interesting and very confusing.

Lex Fridman (2:35:59.380)

Let's set some ground rules for the discussion.

John Danaher (2:36:04.780)

Lex alluded to the idea of man versus machine and chess.

Lex Fridman (2:36:11.220)

Okay, and I think that's a really good place

John Danaher (2:36:12.740)

for us to start the discussion.

Lex Fridman (2:36:16.700)

I'm gonna just tell people about a little bit,

John Danaher (2:36:20.100)

the history of man versus chess,

Lex Fridman (2:36:22.060)

to give you guys some background on this.

John Danaher (2:36:25.380)

In 1968, there was a party in which a highly ranked,

Lex Fridman (2:36:29.500)

not a world champion, but a highly ranked chess player,

John Danaher (2:36:31.860)

his name was Levy,

Lex Fridman (2:36:33.180)

and he met a computer engineer at a party,

Lex Fridman (2:36:40.300)

and they had a lighthearted bet

Lex Fridman (2:36:45.620)

that in a 10 year timeframe,

John Danaher (2:36:48.380)

a human chess player would be defeated by a computer.

Lex Fridman (2:36:53.860)

Now, you gotta remember, 1968,

John Danaher (2:36:55.420)

computing power was very, very low.

Lex Fridman (2:36:57.580)

The computers that got America to the moon

John Danaher (2:36:59.940)

were actually pretty damn primitive.

Lex Fridman (2:37:02.780)

Your iPhone would kick all of their asses.

Lex Fridman (2:37:06.140)

So computational power was very, very low in those days.

Lex Fridman (2:37:09.340)

So interestingly, the chess player fully believed

John Danaher (2:37:12.740)

that no computer could beat him in the 10 year timeframe,

Lex Fridman (2:37:15.300)

and the computer engineer was very optimistic

John Danaher (2:37:18.500)

that he was wrong, and in fact,

Lex Fridman (2:37:20.820)

10 years, the computer would win.

John Danaher (2:37:24.220)

10 years later, they had a competition,

Lex Fridman (2:37:26.180)

and the human won, decisively, in fact.

Lex Fridman (2:37:29.580)

So computational power simply hadn't risen to that level yet.

Lex Fridman (2:37:35.340)

Through the 1980s, computational power increased,

Lex Fridman (2:37:38.700)

but not sufficient to get to championship level.

Lex Fridman (2:37:43.860)

There were computer programs in the 1980s

John Danaher (2:37:45.780)

which were competitive with good, solid chess players,

Lex Fridman (2:37:49.700)

but not world beaters.

John Danaher (2:37:54.700)

Understand right from the start

Lex Fridman (2:37:57.660)

that there's a fundamental problem here.

John Danaher (2:38:00.540)

The number of options that the two players in a chessboard

Lex Fridman (2:38:06.580)

can run through is astronomically high.

John Danaher (2:38:11.380)

There are 64 squares on a chessboard.

Lex Fridman (2:38:14.380)

The number of possible options that could work

John Danaher (2:38:18.860)

or could play out on a chessboard,

Lex Fridman (2:38:22.340)

and this is a truly shocking thing for you to think about,

John Danaher (2:38:26.020)

the number of possible options is higher

Lex Fridman (2:38:29.380)

than the number of atoms in the known universe.

Lex Fridman (2:38:34.860)

Think about that for a second in terms of complexity, okay?

Lex Fridman (2:38:38.500)

The number of atoms on this table is massive, okay?

John Danaher (2:38:44.900)

That is an unbelievably large number.

Lex Fridman (2:38:48.780)

We're talking about a situation where if a computer

John Danaher (2:38:51.180)

had to go through all the options at the onset of a match,

Lex Fridman (2:38:53.900)

they would have to run numbers greater

John Danaher (2:38:57.300)

than the number of atoms in the known universe.

Lex Fridman (2:39:00.460)

The number of galaxies in our universe is vast, okay?

John Danaher (2:39:05.500)

It's measured in the billions.

Lex Fridman (2:39:06.860)

Like, the number of atoms,

Lex Fridman (2:39:08.020)

that's just a number so mind blowing it's impossible, okay?

Lex Fridman (2:39:12.100)

So no computer is ever going to be able to work

Lex Fridman (2:39:17.420)

with those kinds of numbers, okay?

Lex Fridman (2:39:19.740)

I didn't even know future generations of quantum computers

John Danaher (2:39:22.620)

could work with those kinds of numbers.

Lex Fridman (2:39:24.420)

So that's the fundamental problem, okay?

John Danaher (2:39:26.340)

The number of options in a chess match

Lex Fridman (2:39:28.700)

is just so astronomically large

John Danaher (2:39:31.580)

that no computer could ever figure out

Lex Fridman (2:39:34.700)

all the available options

Lex Fridman (2:39:36.220)

and make decisions in a given timeframe.

Lex Fridman (2:39:37.940)

So that's the fundamental problem.

Lex Fridman (2:39:40.100)

So as Lex correctly pointed out,

Lex Fridman (2:39:43.540)

the way you get around this is by the use of heuristics.

John Danaher (2:39:46.580)

These are rules of thumb,

Lex Fridman (2:39:48.780)

which give general guidelines to action.

Lex Fridman (2:39:51.740)

So for example, in jiu jitsu,

Lex Fridman (2:39:53.020)

I could give you a general rule of thumb.

Lex Fridman (2:39:55.660)

Don't turn your back on your opponent, okay?

Lex Fridman (2:39:57.980)

That's a solid piece of advice.

John Danaher (2:39:59.300)

There are obviously some exceptions to that rule,

Lex Fridman (2:40:01.340)

but it's a good solid piece of advice to give a beginner.

John Danaher (2:40:04.060)

The moment you give that heuristic rule,

Lex Fridman (2:40:06.580)

you rule out a lot of options, okay?

John Danaher (2:40:09.300)

You've already told someone don't turn your back,

Lex Fridman (2:40:11.380)

don't turn your back on someone.

Lex Fridman (2:40:12.580)

So a lot of possibilities

Lex Fridman (2:40:14.100)

have just been turned away right there.

Lex Fridman (2:40:16.300)

So you've cut the number of options in half right there

Lex Fridman (2:40:18.660)

just by giving one heuristic rule, okay?

John Danaher (2:40:22.460)

If you were decent at chess, not great, but decent,

Lex Fridman (2:40:26.700)

and you knew enough to give say 10 heuristic rules,

John Danaher (2:40:30.580)

you could chop that initially vast number of options down

Lex Fridman (2:40:34.540)

by a vast amount.

Lex Fridman (2:40:36.260)

And now you're starting to get to a point

Lex Fridman (2:40:38.260)

where if a computer had sufficient computational power,

John Danaher (2:40:41.900)

it could start getting through the number of options

Lex Fridman (2:40:45.020)

in that acceptable timeframe.

Lex Fridman (2:40:46.660)

So that's the general pattern of the development.

Lex Fridman (2:40:50.460)

Now, things started getting very interesting

John Danaher (2:40:52.260)

in the mid 1990s with IBM's computer Deep Blue.

Lex Fridman (2:40:58.660)

There was a great chess champion of the late 1980s

Lex Fridman (2:41:01.420)

and early through the 1990s called Gary Kasparov,

Lex Fridman (2:41:05.340)

who had been more or less undefeated for a decade.

John Danaher (2:41:08.900)

In 1996, he took on IBM's computer Deep Blue.

Lex Fridman (2:41:12.220)

Just to correct the record, he was undefeated.

John Danaher (2:41:18.460)

I apologize, Russian, gotta make sure.

Lex Fridman (2:41:20.420)

They get very nationalistic about their chess.

John Danaher (2:41:21.980)

Be careful of these guys.

Lex Fridman (2:41:23.380)

Deep Blue lost the first confrontation, I believe, in 1996.

John Danaher (2:41:26.940)

It was competitive, but lost.

Lex Fridman (2:41:28.660)

Then in 1997, Deep Blue won.

Lex Fridman (2:41:32.980)

And it wasn't a complete walkover.

Lex Fridman (2:41:35.620)

Kasparov, I believe, won one of the matches.

Lex Fridman (2:41:38.060)

But they did, Deep Blue unequivocally won the confrontation.

Lex Fridman (2:41:43.380)

And it was seen as like this watershed moment

John Danaher (2:41:45.660)

where a computer beat the best human chess player

Lex Fridman (2:41:49.900)

on the planet, and that was it.

John Danaher (2:41:52.340)

There's no coming back from that.

Lex Fridman (2:41:54.580)

I think it would be remembered as one of the biggest moments

John Danaher (2:41:57.540)

in computing history, is really when the first time

Lex Fridman (2:42:00.900)

a machine beat a human at a thing

John Danaher (2:42:02.500)

that humans really care about

Lex Fridman (2:42:04.100)

in the domain of intellectual pursuits.

John Danaher (2:42:06.580)

Yeah, it was a powerful, powerful moment.

Lex Fridman (2:42:10.340)

Now, not only was that a powerful moment,

Lex Fridman (2:42:13.620)

but things started getting truly interesting

Lex Fridman (2:42:15.740)

from that moment forward,

John Danaher (2:42:17.140)

because then you started having

Lex Fridman (2:42:18.020)

different areas of development.

John Danaher (2:42:25.860)

The general way in which the progress is made

Lex Fridman (2:42:30.780)

from those early starts in 1968,

John Danaher (2:42:32.980)

all the way through to Deep Blue's victory,

Lex Fridman (2:42:36.900)

was of the use of heuristic rules

John Danaher (2:42:39.420)

that brought down the number of potential options

Lex Fridman (2:42:42.660)

to a manageable level.

John Danaher (2:42:44.300)

As computer power increased,

Lex Fridman (2:42:46.380)

then it could make faster and faster

Lex Fridman (2:42:48.340)

and wiser and wiser decisions,

Lex Fridman (2:42:50.220)

and make them at a rate which no human,

John Danaher (2:42:52.740)

even the best human, could keep up with.

Lex Fridman (2:42:54.500)

So that was the general way in which the debate went.

Lex Fridman (2:42:58.540)

But things got more interesting after this,

Lex Fridman (2:43:01.460)

with the advent of computers that, as you pointed out,

John Danaher (2:43:06.460)

make use of so called machine learning.

Lex Fridman (2:43:10.940)

There were, a company put out a program, AlphaZero,

John Danaher (2:43:18.260)

which can look at the basic rule structures of chess,

Lex Fridman (2:43:23.900)

and then ultimately play itself in trials,

Lex Fridman (2:43:27.100)

and make trial and error assessment

Lex Fridman (2:43:28.900)

of what are good and bad strategies,

Lex Fridman (2:43:30.900)

so that with no human intervention,

Lex Fridman (2:43:34.100)

a computer could start doing remarkable things.

John Danaher (2:43:38.780)

Not only did this company create AlphaZero,

Lex Fridman (2:43:44.340)

and there were some other ones too,

John Danaher (2:43:45.940)

they fought not only in chess,

Lex Fridman (2:43:47.380)

but in the much more complex Asian game of Go,

John Danaher (2:43:51.660)

which has far more potential options

Lex Fridman (2:43:55.220)

than chess does, by a very significant margin.

John Danaher (2:44:00.060)

These machine learning programs,

Lex Fridman (2:44:02.420)

not only easily defeat any human in chess,

Lex Fridman (2:44:05.900)

but in Go as well.

Lex Fridman (2:44:08.780)

And what's truly remarkable

John Danaher (2:44:10.500)

is they weren't just beating them.

Lex Fridman (2:44:13.180)

When AlphaZero took on a rival chess program,

John Danaher (2:44:16.420)

which by itself was already superior to any human,

Lex Fridman (2:44:19.260)

it only required four hours,

John Danaher (2:44:23.940)

starting from learning the rules of chess,

Lex Fridman (2:44:26.780)

to figuring out how to beat

John Danaher (2:44:28.740)

the second most powerful chess program in the world.

Lex Fridman (2:44:31.780)

That's insane.

John Danaher (2:44:34.020)

That's literally like taking a human,

Lex Fridman (2:44:36.380)

telling the rules of chess,

John Danaher (2:44:38.020)

they play some games with themselves for four hours,

Lex Fridman (2:44:41.180)

and they go out and beat Garry Kasparov.

John Danaher (2:44:44.980)

This is, I don't know,

Lex Fridman (2:44:46.780)

this is, to me, this is a truly exciting development,

John Danaher (2:44:53.620)

far beyond even what Deep Blue did.

Lex Fridman (2:44:55.540)

I like how you said exciting, not terrifying,

John Danaher (2:44:57.700)

because I agree with you on the exciting.

Lex Fridman (2:44:59.860)

Now, things also get exciting in a different direction.

John Danaher (2:45:03.460)

There is another possibility,

Lex Fridman (2:45:05.620)

which few people foresaw after the Deep Blue episode.

John Danaher (2:45:10.060)

This is where a new form of chess started to emerge,

Lex Fridman (2:45:14.060)

sometimes called cyborg chess or centaur chess,

John Danaher (2:45:18.860)

where humans of moderate chess level playing ability,

Lex Fridman (2:45:23.340)

not world champions, just decent, but not great,

John Danaher (2:45:27.020)

I guess you might say like purple belts in jiu jitsu,

Lex Fridman (2:45:30.220)

allied themselves with computers.

Lex Fridman (2:45:33.460)

So the humans and computers worked as a cyborg team.

Lex Fridman (2:45:38.820)

The humans supplied the heuristic insight.

John Danaher (2:45:43.020)

The computers supplied the computational power.

Lex Fridman (2:45:46.900)

And fascinatingly, they proved to be superior

John Danaher (2:45:51.540)

to both the best humans and the best chess programs.

Lex Fridman (2:45:56.620)

The united force of human insight with heuristics,

John Danaher (2:46:01.020)

with computers ability to go through numbers

Lex Fridman (2:46:04.340)

in far more rapid form than any human could ever hope to do,

John Danaher (2:46:08.020)

proved to be one of the strongest combinations

Lex Fridman (2:46:10.300)

and enabled that pairing of human and computer

John Danaher (2:46:15.620)

to overwhelm both the best single human

Lex Fridman (2:46:18.780)

and the best single computer.

John Danaher (2:46:21.660)

That adds a whole new level of fascination to this topic.

Lex Fridman (2:46:26.580)

So to wind things up here,

John Danaher (2:46:29.180)

we've got this fascinating initial question from Lex,

Lex Fridman (2:46:33.740)

the idea of could there be a computer inside a robot

Lex Fridman (2:46:38.740)

which doesn't have any special physical properties?

Lex Fridman (2:46:42.860)

This is mind versus mind

John Danaher (2:46:44.900)

because the bodies negate each other.

Lex Fridman (2:46:46.220)

The robot is the same body as Gordon Ryan.

John Danaher (2:46:48.780)

This is a thought experiment.

Lex Fridman (2:46:50.420)

What would it take to create a mind

Lex Fridman (2:46:53.500)

that would defeat the mind of Gordon Ryan?

Lex Fridman (2:46:58.980)

Based on the chess example,

John Danaher (2:47:02.020)

it would appear that this is entirely feasible

Lex Fridman (2:47:04.820)

at some point in the future.

Lex Fridman (2:47:06.060)

And in fact, I would go further and say,

Lex Fridman (2:47:07.420)

it's actually quite likely

John Danaher (2:47:09.220)

based on what we've seen from the example of chess.

Lex Fridman (2:47:13.500)

The rate of progress in AI in the last 20 years

John Danaher (2:47:19.540)

has dwarfed anything from the previous 50 years.

Lex Fridman (2:47:24.500)

And the rate continues to increase.

John Danaher (2:47:28.940)

We're talking now at a level where the machine learning

Lex Fridman (2:47:31.900)

of defeating world champions in chess and Go in four hours,

John Danaher (2:47:37.860)

like just from starting from the rules of the sport,

Lex Fridman (2:47:44.340)

this is gonna be difficult for humans to keep up with.

John Danaher (2:47:47.500)

Now in humans favor, could we take Gordon Ryan

Lex Fridman (2:47:52.100)

and put a chip inside his brain

John Danaher (2:47:54.700)

that created the same cyborg effect

Lex Fridman (2:47:56.620)

as we saw in centaur chess and cyborg chess,

Lex Fridman (2:47:59.380)

and then take Gordon Ryan to a new level

Lex Fridman (2:48:01.700)

and suddenly his computational powers

John Danaher (2:48:03.820)

were massively increased.

Lex Fridman (2:48:05.300)

He still has his heuristic insight,

Lex Fridman (2:48:08.260)

but he has vastly augmented computational powers.

Lex Fridman (2:48:11.980)

That's the interesting battle.

John Danaher (2:48:15.540)

You asked a great question, Lex.

Lex Fridman (2:48:16.900)

Let me give you my initial push for an answer

John Danaher (2:48:19.860)

would be that if it's just Gordon Ryan

Lex Fridman (2:48:22.700)

versus your robot technology,

John Danaher (2:48:27.060)

in 10 years, I would say with machine learning,

Lex Fridman (2:48:29.500)

I'd say you guys win every time.

Lex Fridman (2:48:31.900)

But if it is cyborg Gordon Ryan,

Lex Fridman (2:48:36.220)

where he's part Gordon Ryan with heuristics

Lex Fridman (2:48:40.660)

and part machine, then, and now that's where I throw

Lex Fridman (2:48:43.780)

the question back at you, young man, what do you think?

John Danaher (2:48:48.140)

Well, I'm fascinated to hear your answer.

Lex Fridman (2:48:49.660)

That's very interesting because there's a lot

John Danaher (2:48:52.220)

of different ways you can build a cyborg Gordon Ryan.

Lex Fridman (2:48:55.100)

So one is there's the Neuralink way,

John Danaher (2:48:58.260)

which is basically doing what you're suggesting,

Lex Fridman (2:49:03.980)

which is expanding the computational capabilities

John Danaher (2:49:06.980)

of Gordon Ryan's brain,

Lex Fridman (2:49:09.820)

like directly being able to communicate

John Danaher (2:49:11.660)

between a computer and the brain.

Lex Fridman (2:49:13.540)

So you preserve most of what there is in the human body,

John Danaher (2:49:20.060)

including the nervous system and the computing system

Lex Fridman (2:49:22.620)

we currently have that's biological

Lex Fridman (2:49:24.380)

and expanding over the computer.

Lex Fridman (2:49:26.420)

There's also on the cyborg chess front,

John Danaher (2:49:30.780)

like Magnus Carlsen, the current world champion in chess,

Lex Fridman (2:49:35.220)

he studies AlphaZero games.

John Danaher (2:49:38.620)

Like it's not a regular thing for high level grandmasters.

Lex Fridman (2:49:42.220)

From what I understand, almost every chess master

John Danaher (2:49:45.580)

now studies computer games for inspiration.

Lex Fridman (2:49:48.700)

Like just as great chess players from the past

John Danaher (2:49:53.700)

used to go back into old leather bound books

Lex Fridman (2:49:56.780)

of previous grandmasters and study games and books.

John Danaher (2:50:00.100)

Nowadays, most people, when they wanna study

Lex Fridman (2:50:03.360)

the most perfect games,

John Danaher (2:50:04.340)

they actually study programs like AlphaZero.

Lex Fridman (2:50:06.860)

Yeah, and it's not just for inspiration, it's education.

John Danaher (2:50:09.980)

I mean, it's literally part of their training regimen.

Lex Fridman (2:50:12.340)

This isn't like a fun side thing.

John Danaher (2:50:14.820)

This is the main way to get better.

Lex Fridman (2:50:18.180)

So there's a certain element there

John Danaher (2:50:21.380)

where even our human brains can be trained

Lex Fridman (2:50:24.420)

by observing the partial explorations

John Danaher (2:50:29.020)

of an AI systems in the space of grappling.

Lex Fridman (2:50:32.180)

That could be actually in simulation.

John Danaher (2:50:34.260)

It doesn't have to be in the physical world.

Lex Fridman (2:50:35.660)

It could be in, if we construct sufficiently good

John Danaher (2:50:41.220)

biomechanical models of human beings,

Lex Fridman (2:50:43.940)

machines can learn how they grapple.

John Danaher (2:50:46.260)

There's quite a bit of that already.

Lex Fridman (2:50:49.580)

OpenAI has the system of, they're like sumo wrestlers

John Danaher (2:50:53.300)

with some basic goals of pushing each other off of a platform.

Lex Fridman (2:50:58.060)

And you know nothing from the, you don't even know.

Lex Fridman (2:51:01.060)

So you have a basic model of a bipedal system.

Lex Fridman (2:51:04.700)

It doesn't even know in the beginning how to stand up.

Lex Fridman (2:51:07.020)

It just falls, right?

Lex Fridman (2:51:08.620)

So it has to learn how to get up

Lex Fridman (2:51:10.940)

and they do that through self play.

Lex Fridman (2:51:13.080)

They learn how to get up, they learn how to move

John Danaher (2:51:15.980)

enough to achieve the final goal

Lex Fridman (2:51:18.220)

which is to push your opponent off of the thing.

Lex Fridman (2:51:20.420)

So they learn that.

Lex Fridman (2:51:22.700)

Now OpenAI is not, those folks are currently

John Danaher (2:51:26.540)

not that interested in the grappling world.

Lex Fridman (2:51:28.580)

So they kind of stop there.

Lex Fridman (2:51:30.260)

But it's very possible in simulation to then develop ideas.

Lex Fridman (2:51:36.120)

In fact, this is something that I should probably do,

Lex Fridman (2:51:38.940)

but it's pretty natural to do it easy,

Lex Fridman (2:51:41.260)

is ideas of control and submission and all the,

John Danaher (2:51:45.100)

you add the ability to, I don't know how to put it nicely,

Lex Fridman (2:51:49.820)

but to choke your opponent

Lex Fridman (2:51:54.060)

and to break their body parts off,

Lex Fridman (2:51:57.980)

which is what jiu jitsu is.

John Danaher (2:52:00.140)

Add that in and what kind of ideas it'll come up with

Lex Fridman (2:52:03.980)

is very fascinating.

John Danaher (2:52:05.580)

I actually don't know, until this conversation,

Lex Fridman (2:52:07.380)

I don't know why I never even thought about that.

John Danaher (2:52:08.860)

I've been very obsessed with just like walking

Lex Fridman (2:52:11.020)

and running and all those kinds of things,

John Danaher (2:52:13.860)

like evolving different strategies

Lex Fridman (2:52:16.300)

for when you have a bunch of,

Lex Fridman (2:52:18.820)

so one difficult thing for robots

Lex Fridman (2:52:21.180)

is when you have uneven terrain

Lex Fridman (2:52:22.660)

and there's uncertainty about the terrain

Lex Fridman (2:52:24.180)

is how to keep walking.

John Danaher (2:52:25.780)

Or when there's a bunch of things being thrown at you,

Lex Fridman (2:52:28.980)

all that kind of stuff,

Lex Fridman (2:52:29.940)

and you learn through self play

Lex Fridman (2:52:32.900)

how to be able to navigate those uncertain environments

John Danaher (2:52:35.220)

when there's a lot of weird objects

Lex Fridman (2:52:36.980)

and all those kinds of things.

John Danaher (2:52:38.500)

There's no reason why you can't just do that

Lex Fridman (2:52:40.340)

with submissions and so on in simulation.

John Danaher (2:52:43.420)

That'll be actually fascinating.

Lex Fridman (2:52:44.860)

But once we might be surprised

John Danaher (2:52:49.020)

by the kind of strategies in simulation

Lex Fridman (2:52:52.260)

these AI systems will develop,

Lex Fridman (2:52:54.620)

and that might make a much better Gordon Ryan

Lex Fridman (2:52:57.020)

and much better John Donahar

John Danaher (2:52:58.740)

in asking the Dean Lister question of like,

Lex Fridman (2:53:01.840)

why are we only using,

Lex Fridman (2:53:03.760)

why are we not doing X?

Lex Fridman (2:53:06.260)

But on the actual sort of grappling event

John Danaher (2:53:10.340)

in the physical space,

Lex Fridman (2:53:12.620)

I've been very surprised and a little bit disappointed

John Danaher (2:53:15.540)

by how difficult it's to build

Lex Fridman (2:53:20.880)

a system that's able to have the body of Gordon Ryan

John Danaher (2:53:26.380)

or a human being actually,

Lex Fridman (2:53:28.900)

which means it's not just the biomechanics

John Danaher (2:53:31.820)

which is very difficult to do,

Lex Fridman (2:53:33.660)

but also all of the senses that are involved.

John Danaher (2:53:37.840)

Be able to perceive the world as richly,

Lex Fridman (2:53:40.340)

to be able to, there's something called soft robotics,

John Danaher (2:53:43.660)

which is incredibly difficult to do through touch,

Lex Fridman (2:53:47.620)

understand the hardness of things.

John Danaher (2:53:50.060)

We don't understand as human beings

Lex Fridman (2:53:52.780)

just how much we're able through touch

John Danaher (2:53:56.220)

to experience the world and to manipulate the world.

Lex Fridman (2:53:59.480)

Like the process of picking up a cup

John Danaher (2:54:03.180)

is very similar to the process of grappling.

Lex Fridman (2:54:05.220)

All the feeling that you do,

John Danaher (2:54:07.160)

all the leverage that you're applying,

Lex Fridman (2:54:09.340)

there's so many degrees of freedom

John Danaher (2:54:11.400)

in both the, in the interactive sense,

Lex Fridman (2:54:14.580)

in the sensing and the applying,

John Danaher (2:54:16.140)

sensing and applying,

Lex Fridman (2:54:17.060)

you're doing that through so much of your body,

John Danaher (2:54:20.420)

that it's just going to be very difficult

Lex Fridman (2:54:23.620)

to build a system that's able to experience the world

Lex Fridman (2:54:26.660)

and act onto the world as richly as we humans can.

Lex Fridman (2:54:30.180)

Yeah, if picking up a cup

John Danaher (2:54:33.060)

is a seemingly insurmountable challenge,

Lex Fridman (2:54:36.180)

then taking someone down, controlling them,

John Danaher (2:54:39.020)

getting past their legs,

Lex Fridman (2:54:40.020)

that's going to be one hell of a project.

John Danaher (2:54:42.660)

Exactly, I mean, there could be shortcuts,

Lex Fridman (2:54:44.980)

but I mean, currently that's the field

John Danaher (2:54:49.460)

called robotic manipulation, which is picking up objects.

Lex Fridman (2:54:52.820)

Usually they have like a ball and a triangular object

Lex Fridman (2:54:55.660)

and your whole task is to like pick it up

Lex Fridman (2:54:57.620)

and move it around.

John Danaher (2:54:59.600)

Generalizing that to the human body is harder,

Lex Fridman (2:55:04.420)

but perhaps not as hard as we might think.

John Danaher (2:55:09.060)

The question is, how do you construct experiments

Lex Fridman (2:55:11.480)

where you can do that safely?

John Danaher (2:55:13.420)

In chess, that's very easy,

Lex Fridman (2:55:15.340)

but here it's very, very problematic.

John Danaher (2:55:22.420)

I guess you could just have robot versus robot

Lex Fridman (2:55:25.860)

teamed up with each other and then they learn

Lex Fridman (2:55:27.540)

and then they go out to take on a human opponent.

Lex Fridman (2:55:29.460)

Yes, exactly, so you have two physical robots

John Danaher (2:55:33.260)

that interact with each other.

Lex Fridman (2:55:35.340)

Everything you've said so far suggests

John Danaher (2:55:37.100)

that many of the problems, these tactile elements,

Lex Fridman (2:55:40.420)

they're easy tasks for humans.

Lex Fridman (2:55:43.580)

So which becomes more powerful more quickly?

Lex Fridman (2:55:47.160)

Robots that are taught to think like humans

John Danaher (2:55:49.580)

or humans that are given the computational power

Lex Fridman (2:55:52.460)

of computers and robots themselves,

John Danaher (2:55:56.980)

which wins first, a cyborg Gordon Ryan

Lex Fridman (2:55:59.960)

or an artificial robot Gordon Ryan?

John Danaher (2:56:03.360)

Really, really strong question,

Lex Fridman (2:56:05.180)

and I think by far the cyborg Gordon Ryan.

John Danaher (2:56:09.700)

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking here.

Lex Fridman (2:56:11.260)

The problems you're talking about

John Danaher (2:56:14.260)

with regards to the robots, those are deep problems.

Lex Fridman (2:56:16.660)

Like if picking up a cup is problematic,

John Danaher (2:56:20.020)

it's gonna be damn difficult,

Lex Fridman (2:56:22.260)

but to a human, a two year old can do that.

John Danaher (2:56:25.420)

You're highlighting a very important difference

Lex Fridman (2:56:28.140)

is human beings have something called common sense

John Danaher (2:56:32.260)

that we don't know how to build into computers currently.

Lex Fridman (2:56:35.020)

That's what picking up the cup is.

John Danaher (2:56:37.780)

It's some basic rules about the way this world works.

Lex Fridman (2:56:41.340)

We're able to, this is when we're children

Lex Fridman (2:56:43.420)

and we'll crawl around and we pick up.

Lex Fridman (2:56:46.140)

What humans don't have that machines have

John Danaher (2:56:48.500)

is incredible computational power

Lex Fridman (2:56:52.020)

and access to infinite knowledge.

John Danaher (2:56:54.440)

Computers can do that.

Lex Fridman (2:56:55.500)

So if you have a Gordon Ryan with the infinite knowledge

Lex Fridman (2:56:58.460)

and compute power, that's just going to,

Lex Fridman (2:57:01.820)

because we know how to do that,

John Danaher (2:57:03.700)

that's going to blow out of the water

Lex Fridman (2:57:07.660)

a robot that's trying to learn to crawl.

John Danaher (2:57:08.500)

Has there been any update on the phenomenon

Lex Fridman (2:57:12.180)

of cyborg or centaur chess?

John Danaher (2:57:14.420)

There was some debate as to whether or not

Lex Fridman (2:57:19.220)

cyborg chess teams could stay competitive

John Danaher (2:57:22.740)

with the latest machine learning.

Lex Fridman (2:57:25.940)

Has there been any update on that?

John Danaher (2:57:27.740)

I believe at this point machines dominate

Lex Fridman (2:57:31.060)

over the machine human pairs.

John Danaher (2:57:34.740)

With the human pairs, when they first came out,

Lex Fridman (2:57:37.700)

they were good chess players, but not great chess players.

John Danaher (2:57:41.740)

Does it make any difference if you have, say,

Lex Fridman (2:57:43.900)

Garry Kasparov and a computer working in unison

Lex Fridman (2:57:48.900)

versus Joe Blow from?

Lex Fridman (2:57:52.620)

It does make a huge difference,

Lex Fridman (2:57:53.920)

but yeah, both are destroyed by machines at this point.

Lex Fridman (2:57:56.740)

And it's not even competitive now?

John Danaher (2:57:58.220)

No, it's not competitive.

Lex Fridman (2:57:59.460)

But they also lost interest in this kind of idea.

Lex Fridman (2:58:03.220)

So I think there's still competitions

Lex Fridman (2:58:04.940)

between human machine pairs versus human machine pairs,

John Danaher (2:58:09.220)

almost like to see how the two work together.

Lex Fridman (2:58:12.660)

But in terms of machine versus human machine pair,

John Danaher (2:58:14.980)

machines still dominate.

Lex Fridman (2:58:16.060)

Interesting.

John Danaher (2:58:16.900)

So, and now we've retrieved back as human beings

Lex Fridman (2:58:21.900)

caring mostly about human versus human competitions,

John Danaher (2:58:24.580)

which is probably what the future will look like.

Lex Fridman (2:58:27.140)

It's very interesting to think,

Lex Fridman (2:58:29.060)

but like that in chess happened really quickly.

Lex Fridman (2:58:32.200)

It won't happen, and it wasn't so painful in chess

John Danaher (2:58:36.340)

because we care about chess,

Lex Fridman (2:58:37.420)

but it's not so fundamental to human society.

Lex Fridman (2:58:41.680)

And when you started talking about cyborg Gordon Ryans,

Lex Fridman (2:58:46.180)

which really beyond grappling is referring

John Danaher (2:58:49.140)

to robots operating physical space

Lex Fridman (2:58:52.180)

or human robot hybrids operating physical space,

John Danaher (2:58:56.300)

you're talking about our society is now full of cyborgs.

Lex Fridman (2:59:00.140)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (2:59:00.980)

And that transition might be very painful

Lex Fridman (2:59:05.160)

or transformative in a way we can't even predict.

Lex Fridman (2:59:10.420)

And that very much has applications

Lex Fridman (2:59:13.820)

as both China and US now have legalized

John Danaher (2:59:18.300)

is autonomous weapon systems.

Lex Fridman (2:59:20.720)

So use of these kinds of systems in military applications.

Lex Fridman (2:59:24.940)

So it used to be, there'd been a big call

Lex Fridman (2:59:27.180)

in the AI community to ban autonomous weapons.

Lex Fridman (2:59:29.620)

So the use of artificial intelligence in war,

Lex Fridman (2:59:33.600)

just like bioweapons are banned internationally.

Lex Fridman (2:59:37.780)

So you're not allowed to use bioweapons in war.

Lex Fridman (2:59:40.220)

And actually most people, even terrorists,

John Danaher (2:59:43.320)

have kind of agreed on this ban.

Lex Fridman (2:59:46.420)

It's not like, there's been a quiet agreement,

John Danaher (2:59:49.340)

like we're not going to be doing this

Lex Fridman (2:59:51.080)

because everybody's gonna get really pissed off.

John Danaher (2:59:54.240)

With autonomous weapon systems, that's not been the case.

Lex Fridman (2:59:59.260)

China has said that they're going to be using AI

John Danaher (30:01.300)

It's not just beauty.

Lex Fridman (30:02.380)

Cause you could argue there's more elegant sort of Uchimata

John Danaher (30:05.500)

is very beautiful and effortless.

Lex Fridman (30:07.300)

I love something about the dominance of it.

John Danaher (30:11.780)

I love the idea in sport of two people

Lex Fridman (30:17.500)

that are the best in the world.

Lex Fridman (30:19.820)

And one of them dominating the other.

Lex Fridman (30:23.100)

And to me, the standing Seinagi, you're lifted off your feet

Lex Fridman (30:27.860)

and especially when it's done perfectly

Lex Fridman (30:32.780)

and with really strong resistance from the other person,

John Danaher (30:37.220)

it results in a big slam.

Lex Fridman (30:40.140)

And that was like beautiful to me.

John Danaher (30:41.860)

That's the Alexander Karelian like big pickups.

Lex Fridman (30:45.580)

I love that.

John Danaher (30:46.700)

It's interesting, you're correct in so far as

Lex Fridman (30:50.020)

you're not just going with aesthetic

Lex Fridman (30:52.220)

and the sense of beauty, but also,

Lex Fridman (30:54.820)

but you are making as it were value judgments

John Danaher (30:59.220)

about the throw.

Lex Fridman (31:00.060)

And that's fascinating to me

John Danaher (31:04.100)

because there's two elements to any grappling sport.

Lex Fridman (31:09.020)

I'm always insistent upon the idea

Lex Fridman (31:12.660)

that Jiu Jitsu is both an art and a science, okay?

Lex Fridman (31:16.100)

It has scientific elements in so far as it works

John Danaher (31:18.900)

according to the laws of physics

Lex Fridman (31:20.100)

and lever and fulcrum, et cetera, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (31:24.300)

But it also has an aesthetic element

Lex Fridman (31:28.020)

in so far as you're making choices with technique.

John Danaher (31:31.220)

You're expressing who you are as a person.

Lex Fridman (31:33.700)

You have 10,000 different variations of moves you could use,

Lex Fridman (31:37.700)

but you're specifically choosing these.

Lex Fridman (31:39.780)

That's an element of choice and self expression on your part.

Lex Fridman (31:42.780)

And in so far as that is true,

Lex Fridman (31:44.220)

combat sports are not just a science,

Lex Fridman (31:45.940)

but they're also an art.

Lex Fridman (31:47.340)

So most combat sports have this sense

John Danaher (31:49.820)

which they have the features of both an art and a science.

Lex Fridman (31:53.180)

And it's not just about high percentage in your case.

John Danaher (31:59.540)

I mean, me personally, I'm obsessed with percentages.

Lex Fridman (32:02.500)

What are the ways to make you win?

John Danaher (32:03.340)

That's the science part.

Lex Fridman (32:04.380)

Yeah, but that's also choices involved, yeah.

Lex Fridman (32:08.140)

But there is an undeniably aesthetic element

Lex Fridman (32:13.140)

to martial arts where you, as it were,

John Danaher (32:17.540)

express who you are as a person

Lex Fridman (32:20.660)

in terms of the techniques you're ultimately going to choose.

Lex Fridman (32:23.260)

Does that get in the way?

Lex Fridman (32:24.700)

Do you allow yourself to enjoy

Lex Fridman (32:26.740)

the aesthetic beauty of a technique?

Lex Fridman (32:28.620)

Of course, yeah.

John Danaher (32:30.140)

When martial arts are done well,

Lex Fridman (32:32.940)

it's the most beautiful sport in the world, okay?

John Danaher (32:35.460)

When it's done poorly, it's the ugliest.

Lex Fridman (32:37.380)

But a beautifully applied submission hold, a perfect throw,

John Danaher (32:43.900)

a superbly set up takedown are among

Lex Fridman (32:47.740)

the most difficult techniques to execute in all of sports.

Lex Fridman (32:51.860)

And when they're done well, they're magic to observe.

Lex Fridman (32:54.860)

But do you prefer certain techniques over others

John Danaher (32:57.460)

because of their, like for example,

Lex Fridman (33:00.100)

I'll tell you, for me, chokes of all sorts

John Danaher (33:03.580)

with the gi, without the gi,

Lex Fridman (33:04.740)

probably with the gi is the most beautiful to me, personally.

John Danaher (33:10.660)

I value them above all others.

Lex Fridman (33:13.980)

People mostly associate myself and my students with leg locking.

John Danaher (33:17.620)

They're usually rather surprised to learn

Lex Fridman (33:19.260)

that I actually value strangle holds far above leg locks.

Lex Fridman (33:25.060)

But not for aesthetic reasons, for effectiveness.

Lex Fridman (33:28.500)

We can talk about that later if you wish.

John Danaher (33:30.620)

Well, let's step back.

Lex Fridman (33:33.300)

Sorry, we drifted awfully far off topic there.

John Danaher (33:36.340)

I think this is beautiful.

Lex Fridman (33:38.860)

We drifted along the river of life and martial arts.

Lex Fridman (33:43.300)

Can you explain the fundamentals of jiu jitsu?

Lex Fridman (33:46.260)

Yes. If I couldn't, I wouldn't be much of a coach.

John Danaher (33:51.380)

Jiu jitsu is an art and science

Lex Fridman (33:56.420)

which looks to use a combination of tactical

Lex Fridman (34:00.820)

and mechanical advantage to focus a very high percentage

Lex Fridman (34:05.700)

of my strength against a very low percentage

John Danaher (34:09.380)

of my opponent's strength at a critical point on their body,

Lex Fridman (34:13.700)

such that if I were to exert my strength

John Danaher (34:15.940)

upon that critical point,

Lex Fridman (34:17.420)

they could no longer continue to fight.

John Danaher (34:22.740)

Well, that's about weapons and defenses.

Lex Fridman (34:27.580)

But then, is there something more to be said

Lex Fridman (34:30.860)

about the set of tools that we're talking about?

Lex Fridman (34:33.940)

That's where the art comes in.

John Danaher (34:35.300)

Because ultimately, you have a set of choices,

Lex Fridman (34:38.020)

and those choices that you make will be an act

John Danaher (34:40.380)

of self expression on your part.

Lex Fridman (34:42.260)

Some will prefer this, some will prefer that.

John Danaher (34:46.100)

That's where you come in as an individual.

Lex Fridman (34:48.340)

That's an overall definition of jiu jitsu,

John Danaher (34:52.060)

of being a set of choices that where you're using

Lex Fridman (34:59.340)

the things you're powerful in versus the things

John Danaher (35:02.620)

your opponent is weak in.

Lex Fridman (35:04.540)

No, I was only talking about percentages of body strength.

John Danaher (35:07.700)

If I have, for example, let's say we have two athletes,

Lex Fridman (35:12.020)

athlete A and athlete B.

John Danaher (35:13.900)

Athlet A has 100 units of strength,

Lex Fridman (35:16.980)

however we define that overall.

John Danaher (35:18.900)

Athlet B has 50.

Lex Fridman (35:20.900)

OK, so ostensibly, athlete A is twice as strong as athlete B.

Lex Fridman (35:26.300)

But athlete B can maneuver his body

Lex Fridman (35:29.420)

into a set of positions focused around a critical point

John Danaher (35:34.340)

of his opponent's body, where he can apply 40 units of strength

Lex Fridman (35:38.900)

out of his total of 50.

John Danaher (35:41.180)

His opponent can only defend with 20 units of strength

Lex Fridman (35:44.780)

out of his total of 100.

John Danaher (35:47.020)

You have now completely reversed the strength discrepancy.

Lex Fridman (35:51.740)

Originally, athlete A was twice as strong as B.

John Danaher (35:54.700)

Now, on that one localized point, the knee, the elbow,

Lex Fridman (35:57.820)

the neck, B is now twice as strong as A.

John Danaher (36:01.100)

Under those circumstances, B should win.

Lex Fridman (36:04.540)

I guess what I'm trying to get at, by the way,

John Danaher (36:07.980)

that's really beautifully said, is what you just said

Lex Fridman (36:12.420)

could be applied to other games, other battles.

John Danaher (36:16.940)

It could be applied to the game of chess.

Lex Fridman (36:19.060)

It could be applied to war, most obviously in war.

John Danaher (36:22.420)

I think about, for example, the American strategic bombing

Lex Fridman (36:26.940)

campaign in World War II.

John Danaher (36:30.100)

The Eighth Army Air Force was tasked

Lex Fridman (36:32.220)

with the idea of destroying German industry.

Lex Fridman (36:37.100)

Did they attack all of German industry?

Lex Fridman (36:39.380)

Of course not.

John Danaher (36:40.140)

That would be stupid.

Lex Fridman (36:41.980)

They attacked the ball bearing industry.

Lex Fridman (36:45.300)

Why?

Lex Fridman (36:46.620)

Because almost all of modern machines

John Danaher (36:51.180)

require ball bearings in order to operate.

Lex Fridman (36:54.820)

In order for the mechanical interfaces of machines

John Danaher (36:56.900)

to operate, you have to reduce friction.

Lex Fridman (36:58.620)

It's done through ball bearings.

John Danaher (37:01.020)

If you knocked out one tiny component of German industry,

Lex Fridman (37:06.020)

the ball bearing industry, the rest of it couldn't operate.

Lex Fridman (37:09.980)

So too with the human body.

Lex Fridman (37:11.580)

I didn't have to fight your whole body.

John Danaher (37:13.300)

I just have to fight your left knee.

Lex Fridman (37:15.780)

If I can break your left knee, the rest of your body

John Danaher (37:17.780)

is irrelevant to me.

Lex Fridman (37:19.620)

But then isn't the art of jiu jitsu discovering

Lex Fridman (37:24.620)

the left knee, discovering the weak points?

Lex Fridman (37:29.980)

Yeah, a huge part of jiu jitsu is understanding

John Danaher (37:32.540)

the strengths and weaknesses of the human body.

Lex Fridman (37:35.220)

There's parts of the human body that are shockingly robust

Lex Fridman (37:38.780)

and there are other parts that are shockingly vulnerable.

Lex Fridman (37:41.500)

The major joints, and of course the most vulnerable of all,

John Danaher (37:45.180)

the unprotected neck.

Lex Fridman (37:46.540)

So if we take something I'm not familiar with

Lex Fridman (37:49.660)

but I was incredibly impressed by is the body lock

Lex Fridman (37:52.900)

that I saw Nick Rodriguez use last time a few weeks ago.

Lex Fridman (38:00.980)

But then I also got to hang out with Craig Jones

Lex Fridman (38:03.820)

who showed that.

John Danaher (38:04.660)

He also has a very good body lock.

Lex Fridman (38:06.620)

So that was, I don't know if this body lock applies

John Danaher (38:10.600)

to all positions, but I was seeing it from when Craig

Lex Fridman (38:14.540)

is on top of the opponent and trying to pass in the guard,

John Danaher (38:22.300)

use the body lock as a controlling position.

Lex Fridman (38:24.820)

The principle behind it is that it shuts down,

John Danaher (38:28.500)

as you've spoken about, it shuts down the weapons

Lex Fridman (38:34.060)

of a very strong opponent.

John Danaher (38:36.220)

That's absolutely correct.

Lex Fridman (38:37.220)

In the case of guard position, what makes guard position

John Danaher (38:42.220)

dangerous, what makes someone a powerful guard player

Lex Fridman (38:47.220)

is the movement of their hips forward and backward

Lex Fridman (38:49.540)

and side to side.

Lex Fridman (38:52.220)

Body locking is designed to shut down that movement

Lex Fridman (38:56.020)

and does a very fine job of it.

Lex Fridman (38:57.780)

You'll see all of my students excel at it.

John Danaher (38:59.780)

Gordon Ryan is probably the single best body lock

Lex Fridman (39:02.920)

guard passer I've ever seen.

John Danaher (39:04.200)

Nicky Ryan is outstanding with it.

Lex Fridman (39:05.980)

Nick Rodriguez is very good.

John Danaher (39:07.660)

Craig Jones is outstanding.

Lex Fridman (39:09.120)

All of my students use this for a very simple reason.

John Danaher (39:12.820)

Understand what is the central problem of shutting down

Lex Fridman (39:16.100)

a dangerous guard player, it's his hips.

John Danaher (39:18.940)

That's what makes him a dangerous leg locker.

Lex Fridman (39:20.420)

You go up against a dangerous leg locker,

John Danaher (39:22.040)

body lock guard pass, single best way to shut down

Lex Fridman (39:25.440)

most of his entries.

John Danaher (39:28.420)

We're all strong in leg locks.

Lex Fridman (39:30.380)

So in our gym, you gotta control the hips

John Danaher (39:33.280)

as soon as possible.

Lex Fridman (39:34.900)

Otherwise it's gonna be a very difficult thing

John Danaher (39:36.320)

to avoid leg entanglements as you go to pass.

Lex Fridman (39:39.220)

And across the board, my students excel

John Danaher (39:43.020)

in body lock guard passing.

Lex Fridman (39:47.560)

They understand what's the most dangerous feature

John Danaher (39:49.780)

their opponent has, the lateral movement of their hips.

Lex Fridman (39:52.300)

What's the single best way to stop that body lock

Lex Fridman (39:55.220)

and then work from there.

Lex Fridman (39:56.820)

So if this asymmetry of power is fundamental to jiu jitsu,

John Danaher (3:00:01.820)

in their military.

Lex Fridman (3:00:03.140)

And the US in 2021 just released a report

John Danaher (3:00:08.420)

saying that they're going to add

Lex Fridman (3:00:12.900)

increasing amounts of artificial intelligence

John Danaher (3:00:15.300)

into our military systems.

Lex Fridman (3:00:17.260)

Into drones, into just everything that's doing

John Danaher (3:00:19.780)

any kind of both strategic and actual bombing

Lex Fridman (3:00:24.320)

and defense systems.

John Danaher (3:00:27.180)

I presume a drone army would easily defeat

Lex Fridman (3:00:31.120)

a human army in the near future.

John Danaher (3:00:33.540)

Like, I mean, just off the top of my head,

Lex Fridman (3:00:38.540)

just think about the implication of kamikaze drones

John Danaher (3:00:40.980)

versus a naval fleet.

Lex Fridman (3:00:42.300)

I mean, kamikazes was humans in World War II,

John Danaher (3:00:45.620)

did terrible damage to our navy.

Lex Fridman (3:00:47.940)

Imagine swarms of mechanical kamikazes

John Danaher (3:00:53.340)

which have no fear, no remorse, I mean.

Lex Fridman (3:00:55.980)

But it's very inefficient.

John Danaher (3:00:58.580)

Kamikaze is very inefficient.

Lex Fridman (3:00:59.960)

You want to be very, like war is,

Lex Fridman (3:01:03.440)

it's the same discussion to jiu jitsu, right?

Lex Fridman (3:01:06.100)

You want to be, you want to create an asymmetry of power

Lex Fridman (3:01:10.660)

and you want to be efficient is in the way you deliver

Lex Fridman (3:01:12.580)

that power.

John Danaher (3:01:13.860)

It's actually goes back to the picking up a cup.

Lex Fridman (3:01:17.060)

Currently, a lot of things we do in war,

John Danaher (3:01:21.580)

like most of the drones that you hear about,

Lex Fridman (3:01:24.020)

they're not autonomous, not most, all.

John Danaher (3:01:26.140)

They're usually piloted by.

Lex Fridman (3:01:27.340)

They're piloted remotely by humans.

Lex Fridman (3:01:30.140)

And humans are really good at this kind of

Lex Fridman (3:01:33.620)

what's necessary to deliver the most damage,

John Danaher (3:01:35.700)

targeted damage, effective as part of the largest strategy

Lex Fridman (3:01:39.340)

you have about bombing the area or all that kind of stuff.

John Danaher (3:01:43.020)

I don't know how difficult that is to automate.

Lex Fridman (3:01:45.500)

I think the biggest concern,

John Danaher (3:01:47.700)

I actually have a sense that it's very difficult to automate.

Lex Fridman (3:01:51.620)

The biggest concern is almost like

John Danaher (3:01:53.840)

an incompetent application of this

Lex Fridman (3:01:56.940)

and consequences that are not anticipated.

Lex Fridman (3:02:01.140)

So you have a drone army where you say,

Lex Fridman (3:02:05.000)

we want to target,

John Danaher (3:02:06.620)

you give it power to target a particular terrorist.

Lex Fridman (3:02:09.580)

And then there's some bug in the system

John Danaher (3:02:12.140)

that has a, like for example,

Lex Fridman (3:02:15.860)

has a large uncertainty about the location of that terrorist.

Lex Fridman (3:02:18.820)

And so it decides to bomb an entire city.

Lex Fridman (3:02:22.100)

You know, almost like there's a bug, a software bug.

John Danaher (3:02:25.140)

I'm much more concerned about like bad programming

Lex Fridman (3:02:28.500)

and software engineering than I am about

John Danaher (3:02:31.260)

like malevolent AI systems that destroy the world.

Lex Fridman (3:02:36.180)

So the more we rely on automation,

John Danaher (3:02:38.720)

this is the lesson of human history.

Lex Fridman (3:02:40.160)

The more we give to AI, to software, to robotic systems,

John Danaher (3:02:45.700)

the more we forget how to supervise

Lex Fridman (3:02:49.700)

and oversee some of the edge cases,

John Danaher (3:02:52.180)

all the weird ways that things go wrong.

Lex Fridman (3:02:54.500)

And then the more stupid software bugs

John Danaher (3:02:58.520)

can lead to huge damage.

Lex Fridman (3:02:59.880)

Like, you know, even like nuclear explosions,

John Danaher (3:03:03.940)

those kinds of things.

Lex Fridman (3:03:05.700)

If we add AI into the launch systems

John Danaher (3:03:09.680)

for nuclear weapons, for example,

Lex Fridman (3:03:13.260)

I think human history teaches us that software bugs

John Danaher (3:03:17.020)

is what will lead to World War III,

Lex Fridman (3:03:21.060)

not malevolent AI or human beings.

John Danaher (3:03:25.740)

Interesting.

Lex Fridman (3:03:26.820)

By the way, I deeply appreciate how knowledgeable you are

John Danaher (3:03:29.460)

about the history of artificial intelligence.

Lex Fridman (3:03:31.260)

That was awesome.

John Danaher (3:03:32.100)

Oh no, it's fascinating stuff.

Lex Fridman (3:03:33.640)

You know, I remember reading when I was a child

John Danaher (3:03:36.060)

about, you know, Turing tests and things like this,

Lex Fridman (3:03:38.580)

and visionaries from the 1950s had ideas.

John Danaher (3:03:42.140)

To see it come this far is just so fascinating to me.

Lex Fridman (3:03:47.840)

Okay, so what can we as jiu jitsu players

Lex Fridman (3:03:50.300)

take away from this?

Lex Fridman (3:03:51.300)

We saw that when it comes to computers versus humans

John Danaher (3:03:55.860)

in chess tournaments,

Lex Fridman (3:03:57.620)

humans had something truly valuable

John Danaher (3:04:01.140)

to give to the computers.

Lex Fridman (3:04:03.300)

That was heuristic rules.

John Danaher (3:04:05.980)

In every coaching program that I run,

Lex Fridman (3:04:09.580)

I make an endless quest to search out

Lex Fridman (3:04:14.260)

and find effective heuristic rules.

Lex Fridman (3:04:17.700)

That's the basis of a good training program.

John Danaher (3:04:21.020)

Heuristic rules and principles

Lex Fridman (3:04:24.420)

give vast informational content,

John Danaher (3:04:27.560)

which can rapidly increase your performance on the mat,

Lex Fridman (3:04:30.820)

just as they rapidly increase the performance

John Danaher (3:04:33.100)

of chess computers to overcome their human adversaries.

Lex Fridman (3:04:39.480)

The great human weakness is computational power.

John Danaher (3:04:43.660)

Most people vastly overestimate their ability

Lex Fridman (3:04:47.980)

to reason and problem solve under stress.

John Danaher (3:04:51.460)

In fact, numerous psychological studies have shown

Lex Fridman (3:04:54.360)

that humans can balance a relatively small number

John Danaher (3:04:57.420)

of competing options in stressful decision making.

Lex Fridman (3:05:03.820)

But what we do have,

Lex Fridman (3:05:05.060)

what is the great and unique human gift

Lex Fridman (3:05:09.540)

is this idea to come up and arrive

John Danaher (3:05:11.900)

at heuristic rules and principles,

Lex Fridman (3:05:14.160)

which turn out to be very effective guides to behavior

John Danaher (3:05:17.940)

for both human behavior

Lex Fridman (3:05:19.460)

and artificially intelligent behavior.

John Danaher (3:05:21.660)

Make that your focus in study.

Lex Fridman (3:05:27.460)

Don't try to remember 10,000 different details on a move.

John Danaher (3:05:31.340)

Okay, that's human weakness, not human strength.

Lex Fridman (3:05:34.820)

Our strength is heuristics.

John Danaher (3:05:36.860)

Make that your focus,

Lex Fridman (3:05:38.820)

not endless computations over 25 details here

John Danaher (3:05:42.860)

merged with 27 details here.

Lex Fridman (3:05:44.460)

That's not what humans are good at.

John Danaher (3:05:46.500)

The uniquely human strength is arriving

Lex Fridman (3:05:51.300)

at these heuristic rules and principles

John Danaher (3:05:53.260)

which guide our behavior,

Lex Fridman (3:05:54.740)

which provides simplifications,

John Danaher (3:05:56.940)

which enable us to take vast amounts of information

Lex Fridman (3:06:00.060)

and parry it down to a few simple rules

John Danaher (3:06:02.140)

that effectively guide our behavior.

Lex Fridman (3:06:04.340)

Take that core insight from the discussion

John Danaher (3:06:06.380)

that Lex and I just had.

Lex Fridman (3:06:07.380)

It was a complex discussion.

John Danaher (3:06:08.620)

We both apologize for going a little bit overboard.

Lex Fridman (3:06:10.900)

That was awesome.

John Danaher (3:06:11.740)

Then dragging you into some details there,

Lex Fridman (3:06:13.160)

but take that away from it.

John Danaher (3:06:14.000)

I love it.

Lex Fridman (3:06:14.840)

It'll make you better at jujitsu.

John Danaher (3:06:16.540)

Sorry, Lex.

Lex Fridman (3:06:18.580)

That was a really exciting discussion,

Lex Fridman (3:06:21.580)

and the depths of knowledge

Lex Fridman (3:06:25.060)

in the dimensions of knowledge you have

Lex Fridman (3:06:27.460)

and interests you have is just fascinating.

Lex Fridman (3:06:30.100)

Is there advice you have for complete beginners,

John Danaher (3:06:33.980)

for white belts that are starting jujitsu,

Lex Fridman (3:06:36.460)

that are listening to this,

Lex Fridman (3:06:37.380)

that haven't done jujitsu?

Lex Fridman (3:06:38.460)

I know there's a lot of people

John Danaher (3:06:39.620)

who are super curious to start.

Lex Fridman (3:06:42.660)

Is there advice you would give them on their journey?

John Danaher (3:06:45.980)

Yeah, I'm just gonna talk about

Lex Fridman (3:06:47.540)

just getting better on the mat, okay?

John Danaher (3:06:50.140)

Because there's a thousand other things

Lex Fridman (3:06:51.300)

you can talk about in terms of morale and persistence

Lex Fridman (3:06:54.220)

and how often that you're trained

Lex Fridman (3:06:56.300)

is a thousand things you'd give.

John Danaher (3:06:57.140)

Break up with your girlfriend or boyfriend.

Lex Fridman (3:06:59.340)

That's one.

John Danaher (3:07:00.180)

I'm just kidding.

Lex Fridman (3:07:01.000)

Let's put that aside.

John Danaher (3:07:02.920)

That's probably the best advice we could give.

Lex Fridman (3:07:05.820)

It goes back to what we said earlier.

John Danaher (3:07:07.940)

I always advocate start your training from the ground up.

Lex Fridman (3:07:11.980)

Okay, your first sessions in jujitsu,

John Danaher (3:07:15.620)

you're going to find to your horror

Lex Fridman (3:07:18.140)

that everyone gets on top of you and you can't get out.

Lex Fridman (3:07:21.380)

And it's a dispiriting, crushing kind of feeling

Lex Fridman (3:07:24.700)

that you just have no skills

Lex Fridman (3:07:26.340)

and you have no prospects in the sport.

Lex Fridman (3:07:28.740)

So your first skill is the skill of being able

John Danaher (3:07:31.020)

to free yourself from positional pins.

Lex Fridman (3:07:35.100)

Most of the escapes in jujitsu go to guard position.

Lex Fridman (3:07:38.980)

And so once you get someone in your guard,

Lex Fridman (3:07:41.420)

they're going to be looking to pass your guard

Lex Fridman (3:07:43.100)

and get back into those positional pins

Lex Fridman (3:07:45.120)

that you just escaped from.

Lex Fridman (3:07:47.180)

And that's just as crushing as getting pinned.

Lex Fridman (3:07:49.500)

You feel like every time you try to hold someone in guard,

John Danaher (3:07:51.500)

they just effortlessly pass you by.

Lex Fridman (3:07:54.300)

So your first two skills,

John Danaher (3:07:56.300)

you got to be able to get out of any pin

Lex Fridman (3:07:58.120)

and you got to be able to hold someone in your guard.

Lex Fridman (3:08:00.220)

So pin escapes and guard retention

Lex Fridman (3:08:02.280)

are your first two skills.

John Danaher (3:08:04.180)

I generally advocate the idea of learning to fight

Lex Fridman (3:08:08.740)

from your back first and then learning to fight

John Danaher (3:08:12.100)

from on top second.

Lex Fridman (3:08:13.720)

Why?

John Danaher (3:08:14.560)

Because the brute fact is when you first start off,

Lex Fridman (3:08:16.920)

you just don't have enough skills to hold top position

John Danaher (3:08:19.300)

or gain top position through a takedown.

Lex Fridman (3:08:21.460)

So inevitably you're going to end up underneath people

John Danaher (3:08:23.920)

for most of your training time.

Lex Fridman (3:08:25.880)

Your training should reflect that in the early days

John Danaher (3:08:28.740)

as a white belt.

Lex Fridman (3:08:30.100)

Start with the first two skills you need.

John Danaher (3:08:32.340)

They're not the most exciting.

Lex Fridman (3:08:33.500)

They're not sexy skills that are going to make you look

John Danaher (3:08:35.380)

like a stud in the training room,

Lex Fridman (3:08:36.780)

but they're going to keep your life long enough

John Danaher (3:08:38.580)

to learn those sexy skills in the future

Lex Fridman (3:08:40.620)

that will make you look like a stud.

John Danaher (3:08:43.220)

Start with pin escapes, go to guard retention

Lex Fridman (3:08:46.520)

and focus heavily on those two.

John Danaher (3:08:49.420)

When you start to get into offense,

Lex Fridman (3:08:51.460)

start with bottom position.

Lex Fridman (3:08:53.780)

So there's a clear continuity between your pin escapes,

Lex Fridman (3:08:56.940)

your guard retention, and then your guard itself.

Lex Fridman (3:09:00.500)

Okay?

Lex Fridman (3:09:01.340)

You've got different options with guard.

John Danaher (3:09:03.700)

Some of you are going to like closed guard.

Lex Fridman (3:09:05.180)

Some of you are going to like variations of open guard.

John Danaher (3:09:08.140)

Some of you are going to like to be seated.

Lex Fridman (3:09:09.420)

Some of you are going to like to be supine.

John Danaher (3:09:11.220)

Some of you are going to like half guard.

Lex Fridman (3:09:13.580)

As a general rule, this is a heavy generalization,

Lex Fridman (3:09:17.300)

but I'm going to give it to you.

Lex Fridman (3:09:18.940)

In my experience, most people benefit the most

John Danaher (3:09:22.400)

by starting with half guard first.

Lex Fridman (3:09:24.860)

I know that traditionally Jiu Jitsu has been taught

John Danaher (3:09:27.100)

closed guard first,

Lex Fridman (3:09:28.220)

and then all the other guards come after that.

John Danaher (3:09:30.900)

I'm a big believer in the idea of start with pin escapes,

Lex Fridman (3:09:34.740)

then go to guard retention,

Lex Fridman (3:09:36.380)

and then start with half guard bottom.

Lex Fridman (3:09:38.180)

That way you get a nice continuity

John Danaher (3:09:39.740)

between your first three skills,

Lex Fridman (3:09:41.540)

and you'll make good progress

John Danaher (3:09:43.100)

over those first critical six months in Jiu Jitsu.

Lex Fridman (3:09:46.860)

What does it take to get a black belt in Jiu Jitsu?

John Danaher (3:09:50.340)

Very little.

Lex Fridman (3:09:51.740)

Ha ha ha.

John Danaher (3:09:55.020)

To show up, pay your fees.

Lex Fridman (3:09:58.220)

Don't set your goals low, okay?

John Danaher (3:10:00.300)

Don't even ask yourself that question.

Lex Fridman (3:10:01.900)

No one cares if you've got a black belt, okay?

John Danaher (3:10:03.820)

The only thing that counts is the skills you have.

Lex Fridman (3:10:06.060)

I know plenty of black belts that suck, okay?

John Danaher (3:10:09.260)

There's a lot of them out there.

Lex Fridman (3:10:11.900)

Don't lower your standards by saying,

John Danaher (3:10:13.900)

I want to get a black belt.

Lex Fridman (3:10:16.260)

Ask yourself something much more important.

Lex Fridman (3:10:18.940)

How good do I want to be?

Lex Fridman (3:10:20.780)

You want to be damn good, right?

John Danaher (3:10:21.940)

You want to do something in this time,

Lex Fridman (3:10:23.060)

and you want to be the best you can.

John Danaher (3:10:24.780)

Wearing a belt around your waist doesn't guarantee that.

Lex Fridman (3:10:27.700)

Build skills, focus on that.

John Danaher (3:10:31.020)

Let me ask you about the fourth thing

Lex Fridman (3:10:33.540)

in facet face of Jiu Jitsu, which is self defense.

John Danaher (3:10:39.700)

Let's say the bigger things,

Lex Fridman (3:10:42.060)

I don't know why it's called self defense.

John Danaher (3:10:44.780)

Let's call it street fighting.

Lex Fridman (3:10:46.780)

Let's call it fighting, okay?

John Danaher (3:10:49.420)

Maybe you can contest that terminology.

Lex Fridman (3:10:51.580)

How about non sport fighting?

John Danaher (3:10:53.620)

Non sport fighting.

Lex Fridman (3:10:54.860)

It's funny, like street fighting.

Lex Fridman (3:10:55.980)

What happens if you go out on a playground,

Lex Fridman (3:10:57.340)

and you're fighting on grass?

Lex Fridman (3:10:58.260)

Is there no longer street fighting?

Lex Fridman (3:11:00.020)

It's like tennis.

John Danaher (3:11:00.860)

You have like Wimbledon, like grass courts,

Lex Fridman (3:11:04.180)

it's a whole nother thing.

Lex Fridman (3:11:07.500)

What do you think is the best martial art

Lex Fridman (3:11:09.580)

for street fighting?

Lex Fridman (3:11:11.420)

What is the best set of,

Lex Fridman (3:11:14.140)

we talked about advice for white belts

John Danaher (3:11:16.620)

to advance in grappling in Jiu Jitsu.

Lex Fridman (3:11:22.100)

What is the set of techniques,

Lex Fridman (3:11:24.540)

maybe martial art that is best for street fighting?

Lex Fridman (3:11:27.740)

Okay, again, you're asking some

John Danaher (3:11:31.260)

truly fascinating questions here.

Lex Fridman (3:11:37.620)

The way this gets framed as a question

John Danaher (3:11:39.980)

is often condemns you to bad answers from the start.

Lex Fridman (3:11:44.700)

This is...

John Danaher (3:11:46.420)

As a questioner, I'm trying to achieve asymmetry of power.

Lex Fridman (3:11:50.860)

And I'm winning.

John Danaher (3:11:53.940)

Put you in a bad position.

Lex Fridman (3:11:55.420)

Don't worry so much about...

John Danaher (3:11:58.020)

People are always gonna say,

Lex Fridman (3:11:58.860)

you know, is this martial art better?

Lex Fridman (3:12:00.020)

Or is this martial arts better?

Lex Fridman (3:12:01.100)

The truth is there's only one way to say this.

John Danaher (3:12:09.860)

Combat sports are your best option for self defense.

Lex Fridman (3:12:15.820)

There are many martial arts,

Lex Fridman (3:12:17.460)

and there is a rough divide between the two.

Lex Fridman (3:12:20.820)

Those that fall into combat sports,

Lex Fridman (3:12:22.700)

and those that fall into non sporting martial arts,

Lex Fridman (3:12:27.740)

where there's no competitive live sparring element,

John Danaher (3:12:36.700)

where most of the knowledge is limited

Lex Fridman (3:12:40.220)

to theoretical knowledge reinforced by passive drilling.

John Danaher (3:12:46.060)

If you have a choice between a combat sport

Lex Fridman (3:12:48.900)

versus a non sporting art

John Danaher (3:12:52.940)

based around theoretical knowledge and passive drilling,

Lex Fridman (3:12:55.500)

go with a combat sport.

John Danaher (3:12:58.300)

Nothing will prepare you for the intensity

Lex Fridman (3:13:04.540)

of a genuine altercation better than combat sports.

John Danaher (3:13:10.940)

Many people, as I say these words,

Lex Fridman (3:13:13.060)

they're probably horrified to hear me say this,

Lex Fridman (3:13:15.980)

and immediately going to rebut and say,

Lex Fridman (3:13:19.500)

no, combat sports is exactly the wrong thing for you to do

John Danaher (3:13:23.140)

because they have safety rules, et cetera, et cetera,

Lex Fridman (3:13:26.620)

which would easily be exploited in a real fight.

Lex Fridman (3:13:30.260)

And if I fought a world championship boxer,

Lex Fridman (3:13:32.620)

I would just poke him in the eye

John Danaher (3:13:33.700)

or kick him in the groin, et cetera, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (3:13:35.220)

You've heard these arguments a thousand times.

John Danaher (3:13:38.220)

Yes, there is some validity to these things,

Lex Fridman (3:13:40.940)

but as a general rule,

John Danaher (3:13:42.980)

if you ask me to bet in any form of street fight,

Lex Fridman (3:13:47.420)

call it what you want,

John Danaher (3:13:48.500)

between a combat sport adherent

Lex Fridman (3:13:52.260)

versus someone who simply trains with drills

Lex Fridman (3:13:56.420)

and talks in terms of theories

Lex Fridman (3:13:59.180)

of what they would do in a fight,

John Danaher (3:14:00.940)

I'm gonna go with the combat sport guy every single time.

Lex Fridman (3:14:05.700)

Now, having said that,

John Danaher (3:14:08.060)

combat sports need to be modified

Lex Fridman (3:14:11.660)

for the use of self defense street fighting.

John Danaher (3:14:14.420)

We haven't agreed on a term yet.

Lex Fridman (3:14:15.660)

We'll figure it out later.

Lex Fridman (3:14:18.460)

What does this modification consist of?

Lex Fridman (3:14:21.260)

Well, some of it is technical, okay?

John Danaher (3:14:23.540)

For example, a boxer in a street fight

Lex Fridman (3:14:27.900)

now has to punch without wrapped or gloved hands,

Lex Fridman (3:14:31.100)

and that's problematic, okay?

Lex Fridman (3:14:32.660)

Your hands are not really designed

John Danaher (3:14:35.460)

for heavy extended use of clubbing hard objects.

Lex Fridman (3:14:38.820)

There's a very high likelihood of breaking your hands.

John Danaher (3:14:41.620)

Mike Tyson was one of the finest punchers that ever lived,

Lex Fridman (3:14:44.780)

but in one of his more famous street fights

John Danaher (3:14:46.460)

against Mitch Green in the late 1980s,

Lex Fridman (3:14:50.100)

he broke his hand with one punch

John Danaher (3:14:52.860)

that he threw at his opponent.

Lex Fridman (3:14:53.820)

He hit the wrong part of the head and broke his hand,

Lex Fridman (3:14:56.340)

and he was one of the most gifted punchers of all time.

Lex Fridman (3:14:58.580)

If he can do it,

John Danaher (3:14:59.780)

you'll certainly have trouble protecting your hands

Lex Fridman (3:15:02.980)

when you go to throw blows.

John Danaher (3:15:06.740)

Nonetheless, this was easily modified,

Lex Fridman (3:15:09.620)

and so a boxer can throw with open hands or with elbows,

Lex Fridman (3:15:16.340)

and so just a small modification and technique

Lex Fridman (3:15:19.460)

can overcome that problem.

Lex Fridman (3:15:21.940)

So what you'll find is that the general physical,

Lex Fridman (3:15:26.220)

mental conditioning, and skill development

John Danaher (3:15:28.700)

that comes from combat sports

Lex Fridman (3:15:31.700)

allied with technical modifications,

Lex Fridman (3:15:36.220)

and then the most important of all,

Lex Fridman (3:15:38.580)

tactical modifications will provide your best hope

John Danaher (3:15:43.340)

in altercations outside of sports in the street

Lex Fridman (3:15:47.260)

or wherever you find yourself.

John Danaher (3:15:52.180)

The least effective approaches to self defense

Lex Fridman (3:15:55.420)

that I have observed in my life

John Danaher (3:15:56.980)

have been those where, as I said,

Lex Fridman (3:15:59.140)

people talked theory, drilled on passive opponents,

Lex Fridman (3:16:04.140)

and generally had no engagement in live competition

Lex Fridman (3:16:08.740)

or sparring in their training programs.

John Danaher (3:16:13.060)

The most effective by a landslide

Lex Fridman (3:16:16.180)

were those that put a heavy emphasis on live sparring

Lex Fridman (3:16:21.380)

and sporting competition modified both technically

Lex Fridman (3:16:26.140)

and tactically for the circumstances

John Danaher (3:16:28.300)

in which they found themselves.

Lex Fridman (3:16:30.740)

People talk, for example, about how, you know,

Lex Fridman (3:16:33.580)

and with some validity that weapons

Lex Fridman (3:16:37.500)

will change everything in a street fight.

John Danaher (3:16:39.540)

There's absolute truth to that,

Lex Fridman (3:16:41.340)

but this extends into weapons as well, okay?

John Danaher (3:16:44.620)

The most effective forms of knife fighting that you'll see

Lex Fridman (3:16:49.660)

will be those who come from a background in fencing

John Danaher (3:16:53.140)

because it has sparring and a competitive sport aspect to it,

Lex Fridman (3:16:56.900)

but would pure fencing be the appropriate thing?

John Danaher (3:16:59.300)

Of course not, you'd have to modify it,

Lex Fridman (3:17:01.020)

but the reflexes, endurance, physical mobility

John Danaher (3:17:03.980)

that you gain from the sport of fencing

Lex Fridman (3:17:05.780)

could easily be modified to bladecraft in a fight situation.

Lex Fridman (3:17:10.540)

What you want to look for with regards street

Lex Fridman (3:17:14.740)

and self defense is not, okay, which style should I choose?

Lex Fridman (3:17:18.340)

Should I choose taekwondo?

Lex Fridman (3:17:19.460)

Should I choose karate?

Lex Fridman (3:17:20.420)

Should I choose this variation of kung fu?

Lex Fridman (3:17:22.460)

No, focus on the most important thing.

Lex Fridman (3:17:24.980)

Does it have a sport aspect to it?

Lex Fridman (3:17:27.660)

Then once you've made sufficient progress

John Danaher (3:17:30.060)

in the sport aspect of that martial art,

Lex Fridman (3:17:32.180)

start asking yourself, what are the requisite modifications

Lex Fridman (3:17:35.580)

and technique and tactics that I have to use

Lex Fridman (3:17:38.660)

or to input to make it effective for street situations?

John Danaher (3:17:43.620)

That's always the advice that I give.

Lex Fridman (3:17:45.620)

Let me zoom in on a very particular aspect

John Danaher (3:17:47.580)

of street fighting where, with all due respect,

Lex Fridman (3:17:50.900)

I disagree with Mr. Joe Rogan and George St. Pierre on,

John Danaher (3:17:54.700)

which is the suit and tie situation.

Lex Fridman (3:17:57.140)

Now, to criticize GSP, yeah, yeah,

John Danaher (3:18:00.180)

he's very accomplished and everything,

Lex Fridman (3:18:01.540)

but to criticize him for a bit,

John Danaher (3:18:03.500)

he made claims about how dangerous the tie is

Lex Fridman (3:18:07.300)

in a street fighting situation

John Danaher (3:18:09.020)

without ever having used it in a fighting situation.

Lex Fridman (3:18:12.780)

So he made sort of broad proclamations

John Danaher (3:18:15.980)

without understanding the fundamentals.

Lex Fridman (3:18:18.460)

So I thought I would go to somebody who thinks in systems.

Lex Fridman (3:18:23.240)

What do you think, is it dangerous to wear a tie

Lex Fridman (3:18:29.600)

or not in a grappling situation

Lex Fridman (3:18:32.200)

versus all the other weapons?

Lex Fridman (3:18:33.040)

Yeah, but we would do it in a street fight, yeah.

John Danaher (3:18:35.560)

It would be rather strange to wear a tie

Lex Fridman (3:18:37.280)

in a grappling competition.

John Danaher (3:18:38.480)

It would be, it would be.

Lex Fridman (3:18:40.520)

Yes, in a street fight situation.

John Danaher (3:18:42.480)

Okay, yeah.

Lex Fridman (3:18:43.320)

Joe Rogan thinks it is like the most dangerous,

John Danaher (3:18:47.680)

it's like it becomes your weakest point

Lex Fridman (3:18:50.360)

if you wear a tie because it's very easy to choke.

John Danaher (3:18:52.960)

George St. Pierre seemed to have agreed with that.

Lex Fridman (3:18:55.240)

Also, George added that you can grab the tie

Lex Fridman (3:18:59.000)

and pull the person down to a knee.

Lex Fridman (3:19:03.120)

Yeah, this is the go to.

John Danaher (3:19:04.520)

Joe Rogan will go for the choke,

Lex Fridman (3:19:06.040)

George St. Pierre will go for the tie to the knee,

John Danaher (3:19:08.720)

which I was saying is ridiculous.

Lex Fridman (3:19:10.600)

So what do you think?

John Danaher (3:19:11.560)

Okay, first off, I actually can speak with experience

Lex Fridman (3:19:15.100)

on this because I worked as a bouncer for over a decade

Lex Fridman (3:19:17.820)

and most of the clubs I worked at

Lex Fridman (3:19:19.940)

did not require a suit and tie,

Lex Fridman (3:19:21.480)

but occasionally they did.

Lex Fridman (3:19:25.720)

Okay, let's first differentiate

John Danaher (3:19:27.360)

between the kinds of threats when you wear a tie.

Lex Fridman (3:19:30.100)

If you wear a tie, if there is gonna be a threat,

John Danaher (3:19:33.220)

by far the more important threat is not strangulation.

Lex Fridman (3:19:36.540)

Okay, being strangled by your tie is possible,

Lex Fridman (3:19:40.240)

but it is a poor choice.

Lex Fridman (3:19:42.100)

There are many other ways to strangle people

John Danaher (3:19:43.920)

that are far more efficient.

Lex Fridman (3:19:45.160)

If I strangle by your tie, I'm literally in front of you.

John Danaher (3:19:49.320)

That means as I go to apply the strangle hold,

Lex Fridman (3:19:52.400)

I can easily be eye gouged, et cetera, et cetera.

John Danaher (3:19:54.240)

If you're gonna strangle people in the street,

Lex Fridman (3:19:56.200)

do it from behind and there's just much better ways

John Danaher (3:19:59.200)

to do it than that.

Lex Fridman (3:20:00.040)

Hear that, Joe Rogan?

John Danaher (3:20:02.680)

With regards to the snap down question,

Lex Fridman (3:20:04.840)

that is more a problem.

John Danaher (3:20:07.280)

I always recommend if you are going to work as a bouncer

Lex Fridman (3:20:09.720)

with a tie, wear a clip on tie

Lex Fridman (3:20:12.820)

so it just comes off immediately.

Lex Fridman (3:20:14.440)

If you don't like clip ons, then you can use a bow tie.

John Danaher (3:20:17.800)

I used to work for years in hip hop clubs

Lex Fridman (3:20:22.200)

with members of the Nation of Islam security team.

John Danaher (3:20:26.280)

They were known, they had various factions,

Lex Fridman (3:20:28.580)

but the one I worked with were the X Men,

Lex Fridman (3:20:30.680)

and they would always wear bow ties,

Lex Fridman (3:20:32.280)

which of course can't be grabbed.

John Danaher (3:20:34.040)

Now, the bow tie was a recognizable part of their brand

Lex Fridman (3:20:40.920)

as security guards, so everyone knew

John Danaher (3:20:42.280)

that that's what they wore.

Lex Fridman (3:20:43.880)

If I wore a bow tie in a security situation,

John Danaher (3:20:46.960)

people would probably think that I was some kind

Lex Fridman (3:20:48.600)

of Nancy boy and want to fight with me,

Lex Fridman (3:20:52.440)

so I couldn't wear one.

Lex Fridman (3:20:53.840)

So I would always wear a tie

John Danaher (3:20:56.000)

which you should become familiar with, Mr. Freeman.

Lex Fridman (3:21:00.120)

That's the Texas bolo tie, which is a kind of shoestring tie

John Danaher (3:21:04.960)

which is very, very thin, almost like shoestring

Lex Fridman (3:21:07.080)

and rather short and just has a simple pendant in the middle.

John Danaher (3:21:11.160)

This is perfect if you need to wear a tie

Lex Fridman (3:21:13.240)

in a situation where you believe

John Danaher (3:21:14.520)

there's a high likelihood of you being grabbed.

Lex Fridman (3:21:17.880)

Because it can't be grabbed.

John Danaher (3:21:18.880)

Yeah, there's nothing to grab.

Lex Fridman (3:21:19.840)

It's literally like string.

John Danaher (3:21:20.960)

Like if you pulled it,

Lex Fridman (3:21:22.280)

it would just slip through your hand.

John Danaher (3:21:24.320)

That tie that you're wearing now,

Lex Fridman (3:21:26.760)

that would give me tremendous control of your head,

Lex Fridman (3:21:29.440)

and I could easily turn it into a hockey fight situation

Lex Fridman (3:21:32.800)

where your head was being pulled down out of balance,

Lex Fridman (3:21:35.400)

and you would have a hard time recovering.

Lex Fridman (3:21:38.560)

So strangulation, not really a problem.

John Danaher (3:21:41.800)

Getting pulled down, possible problem.

Lex Fridman (3:21:44.960)

Solutions, clip on tie, bow tie,

John Danaher (3:21:48.480)

or if you don't want to look like a Nancy boy,

Lex Fridman (3:21:50.720)

wear a bolo tie.

John Danaher (3:21:54.200)

Beautiful, so you disagree with Joe Rogan,

Lex Fridman (3:21:55.880)

agree with George St. Pierre, I love it.

John Danaher (3:21:58.280)

I feel like this is an instruction we put together

Lex Fridman (3:22:01.280)

here on street fighting and the tie.

John Danaher (3:22:06.280)

Speaking of Joe Rogan, let me ask the following question.

Lex Fridman (3:22:11.280)

He's currently doing a podcast with Gordon Ryan,

Lex Fridman (3:22:16.720)

and probably going to try to convince him and you,

Lex Fridman (3:22:20.880)

as he's already been doing, to move to Austin.

Lex Fridman (3:22:23.160)

What are the chances of the Donoher Death Squad

Lex Fridman (3:22:27.600)

coming to Austin and opening a school in Austin

Lex Fridman (3:22:30.960)

and making Austin home so I can attend the classes there?

Lex Fridman (3:22:34.680)

I would definitely have to think about that.

John Danaher (3:22:36.880)

I do know that I personally love New York,

Lex Fridman (3:22:43.920)

but every single person in the squad despised New York

Lex Fridman (3:22:49.240)

and wanted to leave for a long time.

Lex Fridman (3:22:54.440)

What was the nature of your love for New York, by the way?

John Danaher (3:22:57.120)

It was truly an international city.

Lex Fridman (3:22:59.760)

I'm a big believer in the idea of breadth of experience,

Lex Fridman (3:23:03.920)

and if you want, breadth of experience

Lex Fridman (3:23:07.520)

usually requires extensive travel,

Lex Fridman (3:23:09.800)

but training people means you have to be in a fixed location

Lex Fridman (3:23:14.240)

working according to a schedule,

Lex Fridman (3:23:16.600)

and those two push in different directions.

Lex Fridman (3:23:21.680)

New York was the compromise

John Danaher (3:23:23.000)

where everyone from around the world came there

Lex Fridman (3:23:26.480)

so you had breadth of experience of world culture,

Lex Fridman (3:23:29.240)

but at the same time, you had a fixed location

Lex Fridman (3:23:31.360)

so you could run a training program

John Danaher (3:23:32.840)

that produced world champions,

Lex Fridman (3:23:34.440)

so it was the ideal compromise.

John Danaher (3:23:37.520)

It was a fascinating thing to teach classes

Lex Fridman (3:23:40.560)

of over 120 people where literally the entire world

John Danaher (3:23:43.560)

was represented on the map

Lex Fridman (3:23:45.200)

and go outside and see the same thing.

John Danaher (3:23:48.840)

It was truly the world's leading international city.

Lex Fridman (3:23:54.160)

It was like the world's unofficial capital,

John Danaher (3:23:58.600)

a fascinating place to live,

Lex Fridman (3:24:00.640)

so I loved it, but the squad hated it.

John Danaher (3:24:03.040)

For them, it was like an expensive thing.

Lex Fridman (3:24:07.120)

They never actually lived in Manhattan.

John Danaher (3:24:08.760)

They always lived in New Jersey or Long Island,

Lex Fridman (3:24:10.880)

had to commute in,

Lex Fridman (3:24:11.720)

so all they ever saw was the bridges and the tunnels,

Lex Fridman (3:24:14.040)

the expensive daily parking fees.

John Danaher (3:24:16.640)

They only saw the worst of New York,

Lex Fridman (3:24:18.840)

and despite my pleas for them to move into Manhattan,

John Danaher (3:24:22.600)

they never did, and so they hated it

Lex Fridman (3:24:25.640)

because when all you see of New York

John Danaher (3:24:27.320)

is the bridges and the tunnels

Lex Fridman (3:24:28.560)

and the parking garage, that's not a pleasant thing,

Lex Fridman (3:24:32.800)

so I understand where they're coming from,

Lex Fridman (3:24:35.360)

so then when COVID broke out,

John Danaher (3:24:39.760)

they wanted to move to Puerto Rico and work there.

Lex Fridman (3:24:45.720)

Now, Puerto Rico is a beautiful alternative to New York.

John Danaher (3:24:50.120)

In many ways, it has many advantages over New York.

Lex Fridman (3:24:52.720)

It's physically beautiful.

John Danaher (3:24:53.840)

The people are wonderful,

Lex Fridman (3:24:55.960)

and it's just a wonderful place to spend time.

John Danaher (3:25:02.720)

Freedom, low taxes, all those kinds of things

Lex Fridman (3:25:06.360)

that Puerto Rico stands for.

John Danaher (3:25:08.160)

It's Texas, on the other hand.

Lex Fridman (3:25:10.240)

I know everyone in the squad.

Lex Fridman (3:25:11.080)

It's a compromise, right?

Lex Fridman (3:25:12.160)

Texas is a compromise between those two.

John Danaher (3:25:14.200)

Actually, I must say that everyone on the squad,

Lex Fridman (3:25:17.000)

myself included, loves Texas.

John Danaher (3:25:20.640)

There's no question about that.

Lex Fridman (3:25:21.760)

I know Gordon loves it, Gary, Craig, Nicky,

John Danaher (3:25:27.160)

everyone who comes here just loves Texas.

Lex Fridman (3:25:29.680)

That is incontestable.

John Danaher (3:25:34.160)

Of course, in Texas, there's many great cities.

Lex Fridman (3:25:37.200)

Austin has always been one of my favorites.

John Danaher (3:25:41.040)

I love Dallas, I love Austin,

Lex Fridman (3:25:44.720)

and it has the advantages of better infrastructure

John Danaher (3:25:49.720)

as a place to train.

Lex Fridman (3:25:52.000)

It has a much higher population density

Lex Fridman (3:25:54.600)

so that you could get a larger number

Lex Fridman (3:25:56.720)

of prospective students and form a larger squad.

John Danaher (3:26:01.000)

It would definitely be a fantastic place to open up a gym.

Lex Fridman (3:26:07.040)

I couldn't give an answer off the top of my head.

John Danaher (3:26:09.080)

It would be a big move if we did make that move,

Lex Fridman (3:26:12.520)

but the basic idea would be very agreeable

John Danaher (3:26:17.520)

to everyone on the team, I will say that.

Lex Fridman (3:26:21.520)

Well, I'll just have to call on my Russian connections

John Danaher (3:26:24.080)

to threaten the right kind of people,

Lex Fridman (3:26:25.600)

and I definitely would love,

John Danaher (3:26:28.960)

the way you approach training,

Lex Fridman (3:26:31.120)

the way you approach the martial arts

John Danaher (3:26:32.880)

is something that I deeply admire

Lex Fridman (3:26:37.400)

as a scholar of these arts,

Lex Fridman (3:26:38.920)

so it would be amazing if you do come here,

Lex Fridman (3:26:41.240)

but either way, it'd be amazing to train together.

John Danaher (3:26:44.440)

Let me ask a big, ridiculous question.

Lex Fridman (3:26:46.520)

What do you think is the meaning of this whole thing?

John Danaher (3:26:53.120)

We talked about at the beginning of the conversation

Lex Fridman (3:26:55.800)

about death and the fear of it.

John Danaher (3:27:00.640)

The other big question we ask about life is its meaning.

Lex Fridman (3:27:04.320)

Do you think there's a meaning to our existence here

Lex Fridman (3:27:07.080)

on this little spinning ball?

Lex Fridman (3:27:09.720)

That's, you've thrown some powerful questions.

John Danaher (3:27:13.600)

That's the most powerful.

Lex Fridman (3:27:21.440)

For most of human existence,

John Danaher (3:27:24.600)

the meaning of life was very, very simple, survival.

Lex Fridman (3:27:30.560)

The only thing that humans cared about was just surviving

John Danaher (3:27:35.480)

because it was so damn difficult

Lex Fridman (3:27:38.360)

for the early years of human existence on this Earth.

John Danaher (3:27:43.720)

If you look at ourselves as biological agents,

Lex Fridman (3:27:48.840)

everything about our body is set up for one mission,

Lex Fridman (3:27:52.040)

and that is survival.

Lex Fridman (3:27:54.040)

Every reflex we have, every element of our structure

John Danaher (3:27:58.880)

is just built up on the battle to survive.

Lex Fridman (3:28:03.320)

And then humans did something remarkable.

John Danaher (3:28:05.360)

They elevated themselves through the use of technology

Lex Fridman (3:28:10.680)

and social structure to the top of the food chain

Lex Fridman (3:28:15.920)

so that they went from extremely vulnerable.

Lex Fridman (3:28:20.920)

If you take a naked human being alone

Lex Fridman (3:28:24.360)

and put them in the Serengeti Plains in Africa,

Lex Fridman (3:28:27.720)

they're in some deep shit.

John Danaher (3:28:29.560)

If you look at a human being as a survival organ,

Lex Fridman (3:28:33.120)

just by itself, naked, they are among the most feeble

John Danaher (3:28:38.960)

at that task in the entire animal kingdom.

Lex Fridman (3:28:46.560)

You compare us with predatory animals.

John Danaher (3:28:49.560)

We are weak and soft and easily killed.

Lex Fridman (3:28:57.320)

But if you take that same human and put them in the Serengeti

John Danaher (3:29:01.320)

human and put them in a group,

Lex Fridman (3:29:04.800)

and you give them basic technology,

John Danaher (3:29:07.600)

steel, a spear, a knife,

Lex Fridman (3:29:14.360)

he goes from the bottom of the food chain

John Danaher (3:29:17.440)

to pretty much at the top.

Lex Fridman (3:29:20.760)

And so humanity found itself in a crisis

John Danaher (3:29:25.880)

that emerged out of its own success.

Lex Fridman (3:29:28.680)

For most of its history, their only interest

John Danaher (3:29:31.360)

was the battle to survive, and they did it.

Lex Fridman (3:29:33.520)

I don't know how they did it, but they did it.

John Danaher (3:29:34.920)

They got through ice ages, droughts, famines,

Lex Fridman (3:29:38.200)

disease, everything, and they found a way

John Danaher (3:29:40.920)

to get to the top of the food chain.

Lex Fridman (3:29:44.360)

And that's where it all got interesting.

John Danaher (3:29:47.760)

Because an organism whose only interest was in survival

Lex Fridman (3:29:51.640)

had for the first time in their history

John Danaher (3:29:54.040)

a more or less guaranteed survival.

Lex Fridman (3:29:59.400)

And so the big question now is, now what?

John Danaher (3:30:03.520)

We survived.

Lex Fridman (3:30:04.760)

There's no more danger.

John Danaher (3:30:06.280)

The average human being finds himself in a world now

Lex Fridman (3:30:09.520)

where there's almost zero danger from predatory animals,

John Danaher (3:30:14.160)

where getting a meal is the easiest thing ever,

Lex Fridman (3:30:18.760)

where getting to and from work is not problematic at all,

John Danaher (3:30:23.600)

where the majority of infectious diseases,

Lex Fridman (3:30:28.800)

medical complaints can be resolved

John Danaher (3:30:31.280)

in a hospital fairly easily.

Lex Fridman (3:30:35.880)

And so they start casting their mind around,

Lex Fridman (3:30:38.320)

okay, what do I do now?

Lex Fridman (3:30:42.080)

And so the minute mankind's existence

John Danaher (3:30:47.040)

became more or less guaranteed,

Lex Fridman (3:30:48.920)

the problem shift from survival to meaning.

Lex Fridman (3:30:55.440)

And we found ourselves grappling with a whole new issue

Lex Fridman (3:30:59.840)

that had never occurred to our ancient forefathers,

Lex Fridman (3:31:03.400)

but which now becomes one of the centerpieces

Lex Fridman (3:31:06.600)

of our modern lives.

John Danaher (3:31:09.480)

I mean, when you look at your own life,

Lex Fridman (3:31:11.640)

when you look back, you think, I did a hell of a good job.

John Danaher (3:31:16.640)

You know, Hunter S. Thompson has this line

Lex Fridman (3:31:18.960)

that I often think about,

John Danaher (3:31:21.480)

that life should not be a journey to the grave

Lex Fridman (3:31:23.520)

with the intention of arriving safely

John Danaher (3:31:26.160)

in a pretty and well preserved body,

Lex Fridman (3:31:29.160)

but rather to skid in roadside in a cloud of smoke,

John Danaher (3:31:33.520)

thoroughly used up, totally worn out,

Lex Fridman (3:31:35.720)

and loudly proclaiming, wow, what a ride.

John Danaher (3:31:38.680)

Which is the complete opposite of survival.

Lex Fridman (3:31:43.200)

Well, not complete opposite of survival,

Lex Fridman (3:31:45.800)

but basically embracing danger, embracing risk,

Lex Fridman (3:31:49.720)

going big, just living life to the fullest.

Lex Fridman (3:31:54.120)

So within that context,

Lex Fridman (3:31:57.760)

what would make you proud of a life well lived?

John Danaher (3:32:01.760)

When you look back, you, John Donahart,

Lex Fridman (3:32:03.640)

looking back at your life.

John Danaher (3:32:05.680)

First, I will address that question,

Lex Fridman (3:32:07.520)

but let's first look at why Hunter Thompson could say that.

Lex Fridman (3:32:11.120)

Why Hunter Thompson could say that?

Lex Fridman (3:32:13.920)

Because his life was more or less guaranteed and safe.

John Danaher (3:32:17.200)

If you look at animals in the animal kingdom,

Lex Fridman (3:32:20.120)

the pattern of their life is very simple.

John Danaher (3:32:22.160)

They take the least risk possible to secure their existence.

Lex Fridman (3:32:26.040)

Lions are powerful creatures, but when they go hunting,

John Danaher (3:32:29.880)

they typically go for the weakest animals they can kill

Lex Fridman (3:32:32.880)

in order to eat,

John Danaher (3:32:33.720)

because they don't want to take the risk

Lex Fridman (3:32:34.880)

of injuring themselves, knowing that if they do, they die.

Lex Fridman (3:32:38.600)

So the brute reality is the only people

Lex Fridman (3:32:41.160)

who can talk about having casual danger in their lives

John Danaher (3:32:46.920)

are those whose lives are guaranteed.

Lex Fridman (3:32:48.840)

And a fascinating small tangent,

John Danaher (3:32:51.520)

Hunter Thompson took his own life.

Lex Fridman (3:32:54.560)

So that seems like a deeply human thing, suicide.

John Danaher (3:32:58.120)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (3:33:00.560)

That's a fascinating question in itself.

John Danaher (3:33:03.320)

If you look at the number of suicides per year,

Lex Fridman (3:33:07.080)

it's a shocking, shocking statistic

John Danaher (3:33:09.000)

that gets almost no recognition.

Lex Fridman (3:33:11.080)

And yes, uniquely human.

John Danaher (3:33:12.680)

You don't, very, very few animals, you see,

Lex Fridman (3:33:16.000)

killing themselves because their whole thing

John Danaher (3:33:17.680)

is just survival.

Lex Fridman (3:33:18.800)

And that humans paradoxically,

John Danaher (3:33:20.640)

when survival is more or less guaranteed,

Lex Fridman (3:33:22.560)

are killing themselves in vast numbers.

John Danaher (3:33:24.640)

It's usually linked back to the idea of meaning

Lex Fridman (3:33:28.120)

because it's so hard.

John Danaher (3:33:30.480)

It was hard to win the battle for survival,

Lex Fridman (3:33:34.640)

but it's 10 times harder to win the battle for meaning.

John Danaher (3:33:42.880)

When I think about it,

Lex Fridman (3:33:44.880)

first off, I'll say right from the bat,

John Danaher (3:33:46.600)

there's never going to be an agreed upon sense of meaning.

Lex Fridman (3:33:53.800)

As I said, there was one thing

John Danaher (3:33:55.280)

that our physical bodies agreed upon

Lex Fridman (3:33:57.880)

and which is hardwired biologically into us

Lex Fridman (3:34:00.600)

and that's survival.

Lex Fridman (3:34:01.760)

But once we got to a more or less guaranteed survival,

John Danaher (3:34:05.000)

then all bets were off.

Lex Fridman (3:34:06.040)

At that point, you just have to start

John Danaher (3:34:09.400)

listing your own criteria

Lex Fridman (3:34:10.840)

and what one person will describe as a meaningful life,

John Danaher (3:34:13.360)

another person will decry as meaningless or wasted.

Lex Fridman (3:34:21.760)

There's something terrible about the idea

John Danaher (3:34:24.760)

that we're sitting around waiting for meaning

Lex Fridman (3:34:27.440)

to show up on our doorstep.

Lex Fridman (3:34:29.200)

But what I find the best people do

Lex Fridman (3:34:30.960)

is they take charge of it

Lex Fridman (3:34:32.040)

and they look at their lives in a form of authorship

Lex Fridman (3:34:36.880)

where they see their life as a tale to be written

Lex Fridman (3:34:41.400)

and they do their best to write that tale

Lex Fridman (3:34:44.320)

and put as much control over the direction of the story

John Danaher (3:34:48.720)

as they can.

Lex Fridman (3:34:52.520)

In the end, we all have to just try and write our own story.

John Danaher (3:34:57.040)

We all have our own interests.

Lex Fridman (3:34:59.040)

I try to bring in the sense that even though I'm an atheist,

John Danaher (3:35:05.800)

I don't believe that we go on to live after this.

Lex Fridman (3:35:09.160)

I believe that there's a possibility of God in an afterlife.

John Danaher (3:35:13.840)

I don't say it's impossible,

Lex Fridman (3:35:15.520)

but in order for me to believe that they exist,

John Danaher (3:35:18.440)

I'd have to see better evidence than I see currently.

Lex Fridman (3:35:22.840)

Nonetheless, I do believe that there is a great value

John Danaher (3:35:26.840)

in the idea of living for something bigger than yourself.

Lex Fridman (3:35:31.160)

The moment you see yourself as the be all

Lex Fridman (3:35:34.520)

and end all of your existence,

Lex Fridman (3:35:36.400)

you're in for a meaningless life

Lex Fridman (3:35:38.200)

and nothing will ever satisfy you.

Lex Fridman (3:35:40.200)

You can have all the money in the world.

John Danaher (3:35:41.600)

You can have all the power in the world.

Lex Fridman (3:35:42.800)

You'll be empty inside.

John Danaher (3:35:45.040)

I do believe that humans have a deep and abiding need

Lex Fridman (3:35:51.000)

to follow the interests of a group

John Danaher (3:35:53.880)

bigger than themselves as an individual.

Lex Fridman (3:35:57.440)

Is it ideal?

John Danaher (3:35:58.440)

No.

Lex Fridman (3:35:59.280)

Is it an answer to the meaning of life?

John Danaher (3:36:00.920)

Nope, because eventually that group will itself die out.

Lex Fridman (3:36:03.520)

So there's a sense in which it just plays

John Danaher (3:36:06.640)

a kind of delaying game.

Lex Fridman (3:36:10.920)

But I do believe that in order to live a happy life,

John Danaher (3:36:17.120)

meaning is a central part of that.

Lex Fridman (3:36:19.280)

And the deepest sense of meaning,

John Danaher (3:36:21.080)

not a fully complete answer, but a better answer

Lex Fridman (3:36:24.720)

than most people give is to find something

John Danaher (3:36:28.200)

which hopefully does very little harm

Lex Fridman (3:36:31.400)

to the people around you and mostly benefits them,

John Danaher (3:36:34.720)

which enables you to become part of a community

Lex Fridman (3:36:38.440)

and to live, as I said,

John Danaher (3:36:42.000)

for something larger than you as an individual.

Lex Fridman (3:36:46.960)

If there is such a thing as a perfect conversation,

John Danaher (3:36:50.080)

it would be a conversation on death, meaning, and robots

Lex Fridman (3:36:56.920)

with the great John Donoher.

John Danaher (3:36:58.920)

John, I've been a fan.

Lex Fridman (3:37:01.520)

It's a huge honor that you would waste all your time today.

John Danaher (3:37:04.560)

Thank you so much for talking today.

Lex Fridman (3:37:05.720)

My pleasure.

John Danaher (3:37:06.560)

Thank you, Lynx.

Lex Fridman (3:37:08.040)

Thanks for listening to this conversation

John Danaher (3:37:09.560)

with John Donoher, and thank you to Onnit,

Lex Fridman (3:37:12.640)

SimplySafe, Indeed, and Linode.

John Danaher (3:37:15.720)

Check them out in the description to support this podcast.

Lex Fridman (3:37:19.200)

And now let me leave you some words

John Danaher (3:37:21.320)

from John Donoher himself.

Lex Fridman (3:37:23.560)

In fighting and competition, the objective is victory.

John Danaher (3:37:27.800)

In training, the objective is skill development.

Lex Fridman (3:37:31.280)

Do not confuse them.

John Danaher (3:37:33.080)

As such, one of the best ways to train

Lex Fridman (3:37:35.160)

is to identify the strengths of your various partners

Lex Fridman (3:37:38.600)

and regularly expose yourself to those strengths.

Lex Fridman (3:37:41.600)

Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

Lex Fridman (40:01.140)

how do you discover that?

Lex Fridman (40:02.300)

How did you discover the body lock?

John Danaher (40:05.100)

That as one of many methodologies

Lex Fridman (40:09.220)

of achieving this asymmetry.

John Danaher (40:11.300)

It would be an overstatement to say

Lex Fridman (40:12.700)

we discovered the body lock.

John Danaher (40:14.220)

Body lock passing has been around longer

Lex Fridman (40:16.260)

than we've been around.

Lex Fridman (40:18.860)

But what I would say is that in a room full

Lex Fridman (40:20.920)

of dangerous leg lockers, you've gotta have a way

John Danaher (40:23.080)

to shut down the hips.

Lex Fridman (40:25.060)

And so once we started using body locks,

John Danaher (40:28.460)

we saw that was one excellent way

Lex Fridman (40:30.260)

to get around that problem.

Lex Fridman (40:32.200)

But as with all development, it comes from trial and error.

Lex Fridman (40:37.320)

You will often see people teach the technique

John Danaher (40:40.780)

to a certain level and you see the teaching,

Lex Fridman (40:43.760)

you're like, there's a lot of inadequacies there.

Lex Fridman (40:45.800)

And that doesn't cover a lot of the problems

Lex Fridman (40:47.880)

that we're encountering.

Lex Fridman (40:49.120)

And so trial and error is the single most important part

Lex Fridman (40:52.260)

of the development.

Lex Fridman (40:53.920)

Trial and error in?

Lex Fridman (40:56.700)

In the training room amongst ourselves.

Lex Fridman (40:58.640)

In hard training or?

Lex Fridman (41:01.520)

No, it never begins with hard training or everything.

John Danaher (41:04.920)

Techniques are born the same way we're born.

Lex Fridman (41:08.000)

Weak and in need of nutrition.

John Danaher (41:13.240)

You have to build them up organically like children.

Lex Fridman (41:16.880)

And you start with minimal resistance

Lex Fridman (41:18.800)

and you make progress over time.

Lex Fridman (41:20.560)

When you first go to the gym, do you put 500 pounds

Lex Fridman (41:22.800)

on the bench press and try to bench press it?

Lex Fridman (41:24.720)

No, you'll be killed.

John Danaher (41:25.960)

You start off with the bar, you build over time

Lex Fridman (41:29.080)

and then one day, five years from now,

John Danaher (41:30.880)

you really are lifting 500 pounds.

Lex Fridman (41:33.200)

But only a forward attempt, they're on their first attempt.

Lex Fridman (41:38.120)

And they're born like children in your mind first?

Lex Fridman (41:41.840)

Like there's a spark of an idea.

John Danaher (41:43.680)

Yes, there's always a spark.

Lex Fridman (41:45.040)

It's like scientific development on a subject matter

John Danaher (41:48.320)

which is intrinsically simpler.

Lex Fridman (41:51.340)

Okay, there's a sense in which naive

Lex Fridman (41:56.560)

and overly simplistic assessments

Lex Fridman (41:58.960)

of scientific method may not work well

John Danaher (42:01.560)

at advanced levels of science, but they work damn well

Lex Fridman (42:03.920)

in the training room with jiu jitsu

John Danaher (42:05.440)

where the subject matter is inherently simpler

Lex Fridman (42:08.800)

than it is in research science.

Lex Fridman (42:10.840)

And as a result, there'll be a spark.

Lex Fridman (42:15.320)

You'll see something, there's possibilities there.

John Danaher (42:17.760)

Okay, let's puzzle this out, let's work with this.

Lex Fridman (42:21.400)

And you run into a lot of failures.

John Danaher (42:24.000)

You've suddenly been, oh man, if I put my hip this way,

Lex Fridman (42:27.340)

this works really well.

Lex Fridman (42:28.180)

And then suddenly you just try and spar

Lex Fridman (42:29.280)

and you get caught in a simple, normal platter.

Lex Fridman (42:31.320)

And you're like, okay, that didn't work as well

Lex Fridman (42:32.600)

as I thought.

Lex Fridman (42:33.520)

And then you look to rectify things.

Lex Fridman (42:35.520)

If things go in promising research directions,

John Danaher (42:38.080)

you keep them.

Lex Fridman (42:38.920)

If not, you discard them.

John Danaher (42:41.040)

Well, it's funny you say science.

Lex Fridman (42:42.320)

It feels more like art.

John Danaher (42:44.240)

There's somebody I really admire

Lex Fridman (42:46.480)

that talks about this kind of ideas.

John Danaher (42:48.440)

Johnny I from Apple, he's the lead designer.

Lex Fridman (42:51.600)

He recently left, but he was the designer

John Danaher (42:54.160)

behind most of the products we know and love from Apple.

Lex Fridman (42:57.520)

When you say designer, be more precise.

Lex Fridman (43:00.040)

What exactly was he working on in Apple?

Lex Fridman (43:03.680)

The iPhone.

Lex Fridman (43:05.240)

Which parts of the iPhone did he work on?

Lex Fridman (43:07.760)

The entirety of it.

John Danaher (43:09.640)

Was he a leader of a research team

Lex Fridman (43:12.520)

or was he the person personally responsible

Lex Fridman (43:14.800)

for the development?

Lex Fridman (43:15.720)

He's kind of, I would say, very similar to your position.

John Danaher (43:22.200)

He wasn't necessarily the last, the person executing

Lex Fridman (43:25.960)

the fine, the manufacturer, right?

John Danaher (43:27.760)

Yeah, of course.

Lex Fridman (43:28.600)

But there's the, he's somebody that's very hands on.

Lex Fridman (43:33.160)

And it's like, okay, so he worked obviously

Lex Fridman (43:37.120)

extremely close to Steve Jobs.

John Danaher (43:38.960)

Steve Jobs has this idea.

Lex Fridman (43:41.100)

We should have a computer that's as thin

John Danaher (43:42.840)

as a sheet of paper, and then you start to play

Lex Fridman (43:45.520)

with ideas of like, what does that actually look like?

John Danaher (43:48.360)

The reason I bring it up is because he talked about,

Lex Fridman (43:51.680)

he had these ideas that he would not tell Steve

John Danaher (43:54.980)

because he talked about in the same exact language

Lex Fridman (43:58.200)

as you're saying, is there's like a little baby

John Danaher (44:01.800)

that it's very fragile.

Lex Fridman (44:05.000)

It needs time to grow.

John Danaher (44:07.360)

Absolutely.

Lex Fridman (44:08.200)

And then Steve Jobs would often roll in.

Lex Fridman (44:10.600)

Was too ruthless?

Lex Fridman (44:11.560)

Too ruthless.

John Danaher (44:12.640)

This is, he would destroy ideas.

Lex Fridman (44:15.240)

Because Johnny Ive and the team didn't have

John Danaher (44:19.680)

actually good responses to the criticism at first.

Lex Fridman (44:23.480)

Because when they're babies, you can't defend the baby.

Lex Fridman (44:27.360)

But you need a time to develop.

Lex Fridman (44:29.520)

You need to sleep on it.

John Danaher (44:30.800)

You need to rethink it, dream things

Lex Fridman (44:33.160)

and all those kinds of things.

John Danaher (44:34.960)

It's fascinating you say this, Lex,

Lex Fridman (44:36.360)

because this is actually the entire history

John Danaher (44:39.700)

of scientific development is literally the story

Lex Fridman (44:43.660)

of the juxtaposition between the need to protect

Lex Fridman (44:47.440)

and nurture new theories versus the need

Lex Fridman (44:50.880)

to rigorously test them with harsh testing

John Danaher (44:54.360)

that either verifies them or falsifies them.

Lex Fridman (44:58.120)

And learning to find a satisfactory compromise

John Danaher (45:01.140)

between those two is a very, very difficult thing.

Lex Fridman (45:04.180)

When you look at the history of science,

John Danaher (45:06.660)

you will see that there's some pretty damn chaotic moments

Lex Fridman (45:10.560)

anytime there's major theory change

John Danaher (45:12.920)

where all kinds of apparently undesirable tricks

Lex Fridman (45:21.160)

are used to protect certain theories

John Danaher (45:23.360)

with ad hoc hypotheses, et cetera, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (45:25.960)

And ultimately, only time and success over time

John Danaher (45:34.400)

will justify a theory.

Lex Fridman (45:36.480)

There's usually a period where when one theory goes in

John Danaher (45:39.000)

to replace another, there's something

Lex Fridman (45:41.100)

of a battle between competing groups of scientists, some

John Danaher (45:44.720)

of whom advocate theory A, some who advocate theory B.

Lex Fridman (45:47.840)

They often use seemingly unscrupulous methods

John Danaher (45:52.140)

to protect or attack another person's theory.

Lex Fridman (45:54.400)

They dig for proofs.

Lex Fridman (45:56.000)

And usually, some period of time has to go by.

Lex Fridman (45:59.100)

Sometimes, in some cases, it simply

John Danaher (46:00.920)

involved older scientists protecting an initial theory

Lex Fridman (46:03.800)

dying off and new scientists just replacing them

John Danaher (46:09.080)

with numbers.

Lex Fridman (46:10.240)

And this is a common, common theme.

Lex Fridman (46:13.840)

And the same applies in jiu jitsu.

Lex Fridman (46:16.320)

So many times, especially when I first

John Danaher (46:18.760)

started working with leg locks, I would show things

Lex Fridman (46:22.960)

I had worked on to even world champion black belts.

Lex Fridman (46:28.640)

And they would try it once or twice and fail and be like,

Lex Fridman (46:31.840)

yeah, it doesn't work.

Lex Fridman (46:33.880)

And I'd be like, you tried it once on another guy who's

Lex Fridman (46:37.920)

also a world champion who has a strong ability to resist it.

Lex Fridman (46:42.440)

And that's it.

Lex Fridman (46:43.880)

No more.

John Danaher (46:44.400)

It doesn't work.

Lex Fridman (46:45.480)

And then five years later, they would

John Danaher (46:47.960)

see my students finishing world champions with it.

Lex Fridman (46:52.000)

And in some cases, finishing the very people

John Danaher (46:54.400)

who said that the technique would never work.

Lex Fridman (46:57.720)

I mean, if there was ever a refutation of a statement,

John Danaher (47:01.400)

that's a pretty clear example.

Lex Fridman (47:05.000)

And there has to be a sense in which you

John Danaher (47:08.240)

can't be too forgiving.

Lex Fridman (47:09.720)

You have to test hypotheses.

Lex Fridman (47:11.800)

But on the other hand, you can't be too ruthless either.

Lex Fridman (47:14.040)

You have to look for promise.

Lex Fridman (47:17.760)

And my advice is start slow.

Lex Fridman (47:22.080)

Again, the analogy of lifting weights.

John Danaher (47:23.920)

You don't lift the heaviest weights on your first day.

Lex Fridman (47:26.300)

You build up.

John Danaher (47:26.800)

You work progressively over time.

Lex Fridman (47:30.000)

Now, you also have to have some common sense here.

John Danaher (47:32.680)

You can't be too forgiving to a technique

Lex Fridman (47:35.200)

if it's repeatedly failing and good people have tried it

Lex Fridman (47:38.960)

and multiple good people have tried it

Lex Fridman (47:40.720)

and it's just not working out, then, OK, it's

John Danaher (47:43.000)

time to dismiss it.

Lex Fridman (47:44.240)

But don't be too quick.

John Danaher (47:46.440)

Is this where your idea of training with lower belts

Lex Fridman (47:50.920)

quite a bit comes from?

John Danaher (47:52.680)

I've actually just, as a side comment,

Lex Fridman (47:54.280)

and maybe you can elaborate, the place, the gym,

John Danaher (48:00.000)

Balanced Studios with Phil and Rick McGarry's where I got

Lex Fridman (48:02.800)

my black belt, where I grew up as a jujitsu person

John Danaher (48:05.240)

in Philadelphia, they have a huge number of black belts,

Lex Fridman (48:08.680)

but they have a huge number of all other ranks.

Lex Fridman (48:13.080)

And the way they picked sparring partners,

Lex Fridman (48:16.120)

people you train with, is very ad hoc.

John Danaher (48:18.160)

It's very loose.

Lex Fridman (48:18.920)

It's one of those places, one of those gyms

John Danaher (48:21.680)

where you can train for like three, four hours.

Lex Fridman (48:25.920)

And you could take a break or you could jump back in.

John Danaher (48:29.520)

Very informal.

Lex Fridman (48:30.480)

And you can go to war with black belts,

Lex Fridman (48:32.600)

but then you can also play around

Lex Fridman (48:34.760)

with the purple and the blue belts and so on.

Lex Fridman (48:37.120)

And that was really beneficial for growth.

Lex Fridman (48:39.360)

And you can pick which, because everybody has a style,

Lex Fridman (48:43.080)

and you can pick which style you really want to work on.

Lex Fridman (48:45.920)

And then I came to Boston, Broadway Jiu Jitsu,

John Danaher (48:51.680)

with John Clark, who I love.

Lex Fridman (48:53.280)

He's a good friend.

Lex Fridman (48:54.440)

But it's a little bit more formal.

Lex Fridman (48:58.160)

And I found myself, it was a very interesting journey.

John Danaher (49:01.000)

I would be training with black belts the whole time.

Lex Fridman (49:03.880)

And it was a very different experience.

John Danaher (49:07.960)

I found myself exploring much less.

Lex Fridman (49:10.640)

I found myself learning much less.

John Danaher (49:14.000)

I mean, part of that is on me,

Lex Fridman (49:16.280)

but part of it was also realizing that,

John Danaher (49:20.240)

wow, there's a value to training with people

Lex Fridman (49:23.480)

that are much worse than you.

Lex Fridman (49:24.960)

Yes, is there a philosophy you could speak to on that?

Lex Fridman (49:28.400)

Yeah, you probably know it already.

John Danaher (49:31.680)

You know from your studies in artificial intelligence

Lex Fridman (49:34.320)

that all human beings are naturally risk averse.

John Danaher (49:37.560)

This is a bias which is deeply seated in all of us.

Lex Fridman (49:42.560)

I'm sure you're well read on people like Tversky and et

John Danaher (49:45.800)

cetera, who talk about this all the time.

Lex Fridman (49:48.920)

For your viewers, there are numerous psychological

John Danaher (49:52.480)

experiments that are showing that most people,

Lex Fridman (49:55.640)

to the point of irrationality, fear loss more

John Danaher (49:59.840)

than they are excited at the prospect of an equivalent gain.

Lex Fridman (50:04.880)

So for example, if you have $100 in your wallet,

John Danaher (50:08.200)

you're more worried about the idea of losing the $100

Lex Fridman (50:11.520)

that you have now than you would be

John Danaher (50:13.360)

excited by the prospect of gaining $100 that I could

Lex Fridman (50:17.480)

potentially offer you.

John Danaher (50:18.480)

This comes out whenever you get black belt versus black belt

Lex Fridman (50:22.520)

confrontations or any kind of similar skill level.

John Danaher (50:27.240)

Whenever you get similar skill levels,

Lex Fridman (50:31.080)

the chances of defeat get very, very high.

John Danaher (50:34.720)

Interestingly, if you're a white belt

Lex Fridman (50:36.320)

and you're going against a black belt, you'll take risk.

Lex Fridman (50:38.200)

Why?

Lex Fridman (50:39.200)

Because there's no shame in losing to a black belt

John Danaher (50:40.960)

when you're a white belt.

Lex Fridman (50:41.960)

So you'll play more lightheartedly

Lex Fridman (50:43.800)

and you'll have a more fun role.

Lex Fridman (50:45.800)

But when you have very similar skill levels,

Lex Fridman (50:49.400)

you're going to come back to what?

Lex Fridman (50:51.400)

The techniques that are most likely to get you a win.

John Danaher (50:57.000)

That number of techniques is usually pretty small.

Lex Fridman (51:00.440)

And if you're always battling with the same tough opponents

John Danaher (51:04.880)

every day, where if you make even a single error,

Lex Fridman (51:08.400)

it will cost you that match inspiring

Lex Fridman (51:11.160)

and you don't like losing, you're

Lex Fridman (51:13.120)

going to stay with a very small set of moves.

John Danaher (51:17.080)

You might get slightly better at direct execution over time,

Lex Fridman (51:20.200)

but you as an individual will not grow.

John Danaher (51:22.960)

Growth, as it does in organic life forms,

Lex Fridman (51:28.120)

comes from small beginnings and builds over time.

John Danaher (51:33.120)

You can't take an untested, untried move

Lex Fridman (51:36.640)

and get it on a world champion black belt.

John Danaher (51:39.040)

It's going to get crushed, so it's not ready for that.

Lex Fridman (51:45.400)

It's like a lion cub being thrown out

John Danaher (51:48.560)

into the Serengeti plains.

Lex Fridman (51:50.600)

A lion cub is just too small and too ineffective.

John Danaher (51:53.880)

It's a lion, but it's a cub.

Lex Fridman (51:56.400)

And it's not until it grows into maturity

John Danaher (51:58.080)

that it can be a lion that can dominate the Serengeti plains.

Lex Fridman (52:04.000)

That's why I always encourage my students to play

John Danaher (52:07.080)

with a variety of belt types and spend

Lex Fridman (52:11.760)

the majority of their time with lesser belts

John Danaher (52:15.600)

for development purposes.

Lex Fridman (52:16.720)

When you're getting closer to a competition,

John Danaher (52:18.480)

you obviously want to change that.

Lex Fridman (52:19.920)

You want to be getting more a competitive sense

John Danaher (52:22.840)

of hard work, but you must learn to divide up your training

Lex Fridman (52:27.480)

cycles into non competition cycles

John Danaher (52:31.840)

where you're presumably working with people

Lex Fridman (52:35.120)

who are slightly lower in level than yourself,

Lex Fridman (52:37.360)

and in some cases, quite a bit lower than yourself.

Lex Fridman (52:40.360)

And then competition cycles where

John Danaher (52:43.200)

you're working with people much closer to your own skill level.

Lex Fridman (52:46.800)

Is there something to be said about the flip side of that,

John Danaher (52:50.040)

which is when you're training with people at the same skill

Lex Fridman (52:54.240)

level, being OK losing to them?

John Danaher (52:57.520)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (52:58.320)

You have to see training for what it is.

John Danaher (53:01.000)

Training is about skill development,

Lex Fridman (53:03.160)

not about winning or losing.

John Danaher (53:04.800)

You've got to understand that you

Lex Fridman (53:08.640)

don't need to win every battle.

John Danaher (53:10.800)

You only need to win the battles that count.

Lex Fridman (53:13.600)

And the battles that count are in the world championship

John Danaher (53:16.400)

finals.

Lex Fridman (53:17.640)

That's the one that counts.

John Danaher (53:18.840)

Think about that win.

Lex Fridman (53:20.720)

That's the one you're going to be remembered for.

John Danaher (53:22.920)

You're not going to be remembered for the battle you

Lex Fridman (53:24.920)

lost on Tuesday afternoon at 3 PM in some nameless gym

John Danaher (53:27.800)

with some guy that no one cares about.

Lex Fridman (53:29.920)

No one's going to remember that.

John Danaher (53:31.400)

You're going to be remembered for your peak performances,

Lex Fridman (53:33.640)

not your everyday performances.

John Danaher (53:35.480)

Focus your everyday performances on skill development

Lex Fridman (53:38.720)

so that your peak performances you can focus on winning.

John Danaher (53:43.960)

This is not a therapy session, but if I could just speak.

Lex Fridman (53:48.800)

Every session's a therapy session.

John Danaher (53:52.040)

There is still an ape thing in there.

Lex Fridman (53:56.680)

Of course.

Lex Fridman (53:57.160)

You think I don't feel it?

Lex Fridman (53:59.600)

You think everyone in the room doesn't feel it?

John Danaher (54:02.200)

Because, for example, you have never seen me roll.

Lex Fridman (54:06.840)

When there's people, I've seen the look in people's eyes

John Danaher (54:10.520)

when they see me train.

Lex Fridman (54:12.640)

And I could see, maybe it's me projecting,

Lex Fridman (54:16.080)

but they think, I thought you were supposed to be good.

Lex Fridman (54:18.880)

I thought you were supposed to be a black belt.

John Danaher (54:22.160)

That look, they're like studying.

Lex Fridman (54:24.240)

I'm going to give you some therapy.

John Danaher (54:25.880)

OK.

Lex Fridman (54:26.400)

Do you know how many people have come up

John Danaher (54:32.600)

to me over the years who have visited the training

Lex Fridman (54:37.400)

halls that I work in, and they come up to me and they go,

John Danaher (54:39.920)

man, I rolled with Gary Tonin.

Lex Fridman (54:43.880)

I did really well with him, like really well.

John Danaher (54:48.480)

I'm like, oh, that's very good, very impressive.

Lex Fridman (54:52.360)

And then I see them talking to their friends, like, man,

John Danaher (54:55.680)

I tapped out Gary Tonin.

Lex Fridman (54:59.800)

And I'm sitting there going, yeah.

Lex Fridman (55:04.040)

And you can see that they're just like, whoa, dude,

Lex Fridman (55:06.960)

I'm way better than I thought I was.

John Danaher (55:10.040)

Gary Tonin, all of my students, I

Lex Fridman (55:14.800)

push them in the direction of giving up bad positions

Lex Fridman (55:19.160)

so that they practice working, getting out

Lex Fridman (55:21.000)

of critical situations.

John Danaher (55:22.080)

It's a huge part of our training program.

Lex Fridman (55:24.160)

But Gary Tonin takes that to a level

John Danaher (55:26.240)

that just no one else even gets close.

Lex Fridman (55:28.360)

It's just amazing.

John Danaher (55:30.560)

He will put himself in impossible situations

Lex Fridman (55:34.440)

where it's a fully locked strangle, 100% on with both

John Danaher (55:40.240)

his arms behind his back.

Lex Fridman (55:42.280)

And he'll try to work out from there.

Lex Fridman (55:44.800)

And seven times out of 10, he does.

Lex Fridman (55:48.560)

But three times out of 10, he gets caught.

John Danaher (55:52.960)

I'm a huge advocate of handicap training,

Lex Fridman (55:55.880)

where you handicap yourself to work on skills.

John Danaher (55:59.680)

He's took that to heart to a level that few people, I

Lex Fridman (56:04.360)

believe, can match.

John Danaher (56:05.720)

I just wonder what his psychology is like, because there's.

Lex Fridman (56:08.000)

It goes back to what we talked about before, Lex.

John Danaher (56:10.480)

You have to understand it's skill development.

Lex Fridman (56:13.640)

Don't take it personally.

John Danaher (56:16.280)

I understand.

Lex Fridman (56:16.960)

I hear where you're coming from.

John Danaher (56:18.400)

We've all got what you call the ape reflex, where

Lex Fridman (56:21.040)

we want to be dominant, OK?

John Danaher (56:22.720)

We all do.

Lex Fridman (56:23.680)

Because there's thousands of white belts out there

John Danaher (56:25.680)

that have tapped Gary Tonan, and they're walking around,

Lex Fridman (56:28.880)

and they're posting online.

John Danaher (56:30.200)

I tapped Gary Tonan.

Lex Fridman (56:32.560)

Gary Tonan's one of the best in the world,

Lex Fridman (56:34.400)

so I'm one of the best in the world.

Lex Fridman (56:36.400)

And does Gary get upset about this?

John Danaher (56:40.200)

No, of course not.

Lex Fridman (56:41.080)

Because Gary knows that when it counts on stage,

John Danaher (56:43.400)

he's going to be going 100% with a set of skills

Lex Fridman (56:46.720)

that very few people can match.

John Danaher (56:49.600)

He can go into an EBI overtime at the 205 pound weight

Lex Fridman (56:53.920)

division against an ADCC champion,

John Danaher (56:57.560)

starting in a full arm lock position,

Lex Fridman (57:00.600)

and effortlessly get out with no problems in seconds.

John Danaher (57:04.680)

Because he's been in that situation 25,000 times

Lex Fridman (57:08.960)

with varying degrees of skilled opponents.

Lex Fridman (57:12.760)

And there's just no panic, no fear.

Lex Fridman (57:16.160)

He's just doing what he's done so many thousands of times.

Lex Fridman (57:20.280)

And that's a fine, fine example of a guy

Lex Fridman (57:24.200)

who didn't give a damn what happened in the training room,

Lex Fridman (57:26.760)

but when it counted on the stage, in front of the cameras,

Lex Fridman (57:30.560)

it kicked in.

John Danaher (57:32.120)

Yeah, he's an incredible inspiration, actually.

Lex Fridman (57:35.360)

He's a practitioner of something you've recently

John Danaher (57:38.400)

talked quite a bit about, which is the power

Lex Fridman (57:40.560)

of escaping sort of bad positions.

John Danaher (57:43.180)

I think you've talked about it,

Lex Fridman (57:46.340)

which is really interesting framing,

John Danaher (57:47.900)

is escaping bad positions is one of the best ways,

Lex Fridman (57:54.140)

if not the best way, to demonstrate dominance

John Danaher (57:58.740)

psychologically over your opponent.

Lex Fridman (58:01.340)

That anything they throw at you,

John Danaher (58:05.180)

like their weapons are useless against you.

Lex Fridman (58:08.700)

There's a little bit of Lex Friedman

John Danaher (58:10.260)

kicking through on this question.

Lex Fridman (58:11.740)

Your obsession with dominance is skewing your point of view.

John Danaher (58:16.740)

It's a therapy session, it's a therapy session.

Lex Fridman (58:19.380)

I'm coming from a wrestling perspective.

John Danaher (58:22.420)

I think it's not just Lex Friedman.

Lex Fridman (58:23.980)

I think it's Dan Gable.

John Danaher (58:25.020)

I think it's dominant.

Lex Fridman (58:26.900)

The Gary Tonin ethic, it just goes against everything

John Danaher (58:31.160)

wrestling is about.

Lex Fridman (58:32.300)

You never put yourself in a bad position.

Lex Fridman (58:35.600)

And the fact, it's a, philosophically,

Lex Fridman (58:39.700)

I don't know what to do with it.

John Danaher (58:40.780)

It's a total reframing of showing dominance

Lex Fridman (58:45.720)

by escaping any bad position.

John Danaher (58:49.060)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (58:49.900)

Let's talk about the idea of what is the value of escapes?

Lex Fridman (58:53.580)

Why do I put this in as the first skill

Lex Fridman (58:56.820)

that every Jiu Jitsu student must master?

John Danaher (59:01.540)

Believe it or not, when I talked about how it

Lex Fridman (59:07.780)

pertains to dominance,

John Danaher (59:09.280)

that's its smallest value.

Lex Fridman (59:12.320)

Its greatest value has nothing to do with dominance.

John Danaher (59:14.980)

It has to do with confidence.

Lex Fridman (59:19.300)

You can train someone and teach them technique

John Danaher (59:22.540)

until you're blue in the face.

Lex Fridman (59:25.420)

But at some point, the athlete in question

John Danaher (59:29.340)

has to go out there on the stage and pull the trigger

Lex Fridman (59:33.460)

when the time is right.

John Danaher (59:34.720)

What's going to give you that ability

Lex Fridman (59:37.720)

to go from the physical skills that you've learned

John Danaher (59:41.960)

to execution under pressure is confidence.

Lex Fridman (59:51.960)

I always talk about skill development.

Lex Fridman (59:54.160)

And yes, skill development is the absolute bedrock

Lex Fridman (59:57.320)

of my training programs.

Lex Fridman (59:58.760)

But you can't finish at that level.