John Danaher recently sat down with Firas Zahabi to discuss what he believes makes Gordon Ryan one of the most dominant grapplers of all time, one of the most common questions newcomers to the sport might have when they see his great performances. Many people have wondered why exactly Gordon Ryan is able to stay so dominant and what it is about him that has turned him into one of the greatest grapplers on the planet. His long-time coach John Danaher was able to come up with four key things that combine to make Gordon Ryan a great grappler:
“He has an extraordinary memory. On more than a few occassions, Gordon would come to me after class and ask: “Hey John, do you remember that thing you showed me back in 2018, when the guy is on the left Ashi Garami and you’ve told me to turnout on the opposite direction… And I’m looking at him, like, what? He has to jog back my memory so I can then report it back to him. So, he has an incredible ability to recall information.”
“Secondly, he has an incredible ability to stay calm under stress. Problem-solving is difficult enough as it is and you make it more difficult when you stress yourself. And so, athletes who can cope with stress, or downplay stress, always perform better. And he is truly extraordinary in this regard.”
“He does have good physical attributes for the game that he plays. He’s actually quite slow and his coordination is nothing to brag about. In many ways, if you took him through standardized athlete testing, he would actually perform quite poorly. But, he has incredible isometric tension and an ability to hold it for long periods of time. And his entire game is based around that.”
“And of course, the most important one of them all, is that he is a natural problem-solver. He’s very good at finding practical solutions to problems. If he runs into problems, he’ll think… Sometimes we’ll troubleshoot together or experiment with things and go back-and-forth. He’s just a natural problem-solver.”
John Danaher spoke to Firas Zahabi to reveal the four things that make Gordon Ryan one of the greatest grapplers of all time and the video was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of Tristar Gym:
