Ethan Crelinsten recently made an appearance on an episode of The Inside Position Podcast with ADCC Veteran Tom Halpin and in it he gave some fantastic insights in to what it’s like training with both the B-Team and John Danaher, and the biggest lesson he learned from his time with the latter. Crelinsten was one of the top competitors to make his way through the ranks at the blue basement in Renzo Gracie’s in New York and he even moved to Puerto Rico with the rest of the Danaher.
Crelinsten has a wealth of grappling experience as he grew up in Montreal, Canada and originally started training in a smaller MMA gym before making the move to the largest gym in the country, Tristar MMA. It was that gym’s close ties with Renzo Gracie’s that brought him to the Danaher Death Squad, as Tristar fighter Tom Breese brought in Gordon Ryan for a fight camp and this exposed Crelinsten to the grappling talent he could find in New York. Ethan Crelinsten then spent five years training under John Danaher and naturally, Halpin had to ask what the biggest lesson he learned from one of grappling’s greatest coaches was:
‘’The biggest takeaway I think, is just, it’s hard to put it into one thing. Everyone sort of overestimates what they can do in 1 year, but underestimates what they can do in 5 years. I think that is a big, big takeaway from my 5 or so years training with all those guys.’’
‘’It would be frustrating, like, the months would turn to years, and you’re still, like, not where you want to be. But then, if you look where you were 5 years (ago) from the point where you start questioning that, you’ll see you’ve come a long way, if you’re consistent and you’re not tearing apart your knees and everything.’’
‘’Consistency and discipline I’d say is, like, a big thing for all of us. That’s the big thing we were sort of hammering away at, back at Renzo’s and Puerto Rico.’
The full episode of the Inside Position Podcast with Ethan Crelinsten where he discusses the biggest lesson he learned from John Danaher and much more, can be found below:
