Yea firas needs to stay in his lane alot when it comes to science and his strength and conditioning advice, hell of a coach but he talks shit about alot of s&c stuff and promotes some dumb training
@@MrSpicabooo the vast majority of coaches in mma and bjj gyms have such a broscience view of s&c. My first mma coach had us doing 10 minutes of rpe 11 cardio after every single class. My cardio got noticeably worse the more I trained there
@@hookoffthejab1 yea even when i started doin mma classes when i was in highschool and starting college the coaches said that strenght doesnt really matter and its all skill, but i could hold my own in grappling just off my strenght from football. I saw a video of wonderboys “s&c” and it was horrendous. Even the supposed top tier s&c coach in mma phil daru has bad training philosophy in my opinion, he bases his approach on the conjugate method and bands and stuff which is useless at best, and detrimental at worse. Not to mention the idea of “sport specific” training, too many coaches try to bring the sport to the weight room when all u need to do is get as generally strong as possible and go practice ur sport
@@hookoffthejab1 yeah that's a bad sign if a supposed s&c coach has you doing something day in and day out at RPE 11 with no programming for progression for progressive overload. No RPE scaling, no percentage based progression. Glad you stopped training there
Awesome video! It’s great that you dare to call out such a big name as Danaher. I think it is really important to treat popular figures with proper criticism.
Danaher had a solid start at "physical performance creates confidence", but his theory falls on its nose for being so incomplete. You don't need to go far from his initial position that you find a glaring contradiction. When an athlete in peak performance underperforms dramatically. His belief simply can't explain that. If he would just listen some interviews with the american olympic judoka Travis Stevens, he'd hear a story that would pretty much break his belief apart. The guy who took on jiujitsu (Danaher's own sport) after judo and performed very well there as well. One of the few who have been able to do that crossing in either direction. To give a brief idea to the interested, Stevens lost a critical match by referee vote in the olympics, a match he should've won easily and where it was sort of implied that the referee decision wasn't as individual judgment as it should be. He was in very good condition still, but his mental state spiraled to frustration, resentment, anger, hopelessness and lacking meaning and anything you could think of. He would get booted early from even national level tournaments in america despite being an olympic level athlete, a head and shoulders above the usual competition. It took years of working with sports psychologist and working on himself and finding that meaning until he was back on the track and would be a serious challenger in the olympic games again. He was never physically short of that level, his mental state was what hurt his judo. In interviews/podcasts he talks in length about how he worked on his mental training, and you can believe me when I say that mental training was a huge part of his regular training towards olympic medal. In my interpretation he attributed a huge part of reaching that medal goal to the mental training. That his judo was always up there for medals, but he needed really good mental training to get through the kill or be killed bracket where one unlucky draw can end your medal dream, where every second of every match needs to be on point or you're out in a second. It's also what they started doing with the whole team USA olympic judo team. The unfortunate thing about this interview in my opinion is that someone with down in the trenches experience and merits is talking about something he doesn't really understand. It's one thing to know yourself and what works for you, but you can't just jump into generalizing your personal experience and think that your experience trumps a whole field of academy. If you don't even understand what they're doing, how can you swipe it under the table so easily? I could understand bits of critique and telling about personal experiences, especially if he had studied the topic and understood what it's about, but just randomly opposing it without understanding it sets a bad example.
Yeah definitely something to learn from Travis’ story. Interestingly, Travis is a black belt under John Danaher if I remember correctly (or at least trained under him at Renzo’s) so I’d be surprised if he didn’t know about Travis’ struggles
@@tylerheartstono Good point, makes me wonder how he ended up with the stance he has! Although I'm not sure if it ever came up and was relevant in their interaction.
John also said that confidence is rational reflection on the past experience. Which very much explains Travis's case that you mentioned (his confidence shattered because of unfortunate experience). Also as someone already said Travis is bjj black belt under Danaher, so John obviously knows Travis's story. And don't equalise confidence to overall mental state. For example if bjj player will be forced to have a match let's say when his parents in hospital, he will obviously be in bad mental state and it will affect his performance. But it won't change his self-confidence. John supports the idea that mindset is very important to succeed in competition, he talked about GSP's mindset and how it helped him
Yea but trevis is an American Judoka. They are not that skilled in a technical sense. They don't get support like other sports so they can not realy put so much time in organic training. Travis Steven's is not the strongest mentally also. He refused to do squats in the gym because he was afraid of squats.
i don't know, but when i did a freaking hard biketrip, i just said to myself, 'they don't know me son' , and 'who's gonna carry the boats and the logs'. It took me through the whole biketrip, after the trip i almost passed out sleeping. I think the motivational speaks help to a degree, some things may help, some not. But you're right, most of them don't work. Maybe i'm just kinda weird tho 🤣🤣.
When I'm feeling weak while lifting, bar feels heavy, hands hurt etc. I tell myself "don't be a bitch. Nobody else will do it for you" and it usually works haha
What motivates me is reading about holocaust camps and other horrors that happened and how people lived in these conditions. It's something that is horrible to read but it helps my mental state a lot.
Not sure this really effectively calls Danaher out. He claims in his experience that increased levels of skill (competence) has led to his athletes increasing in confidence. This is heavily backed by research. The goal of sport psychology is to improve performance, confidence without competence is useless to an athlete’s performance . Your example of the high school athlete only further emphasises his point rather than negates it. This high school player is obviously highly skilled in physical sports and as a result is highly confident. If he’s not confident in academic area this is probably due to him not being competent and putting time into practice in that area (developing academic skills). As for Danahers claim that’s sport psychology consists of motivational videos and speeches, I think that’s a lazy conclusion from Danaher and agree with all your points on that one
I skateboarded for 10 years and have been training jiu-jitsu for nearly 8 years. I think a sport like skateboarding involves having to overcome a fear response a lot more and you can build bad habits. I would make sure to skate a rail everyday, otherwise the fear would build up. That's how you build and maintain confidence. In both sports though, the way to build confidence is through repetition of the action you want to build confidence in. If you're scared of going for a submission, it's likely because you're not confident that you will be able to get it. The reason you're scared is probably because you think you might lose it and the other guy gets on top of you
I can tell you from experience that being physically powerful in Parkour doesn't mean **** if you don't have the mental fortitude. Sure, you can have a large standing broad jump or an impressive triple jump distance, but if you can't sprint into a 10ft jump to a rail despite being 20 - 30% more powerful than the jump calls for, then you're screwed.
Interesting to hear Danaher say this given his academic background in philosophy, guess it says more about the state of ivory tower philosophy than anything 😩
@@shifty220 depends on what he studied in philosophy. It can range from logical reasoning thats similar to math to continental philosophy like marxism to ethics
John Danaher doesn't understand a lot of things. He doesn't let his athletes do conditioning because you can only improve V02 max by around 2%. This shows that he thinks conditioning consists only of v02 max lol
Ok so training Georges St-Pierre considered one of the greatest mixed martial artists in the UFC of all time and Gordan Ryan the greatest professional no-Gi BJJ artist in world means he knows nothing about high performance combat sport?
@@linksvexier9272 he doesn’t know what it’s like to compete . He has this idea in his head what it’s like but it’s not a reality to anyone who’s actually competed
I trust and respect Danaher in his area of expertise (jiu jitsu). Outside of that he can be ignored. Why would anyone take him seriously? He doesn't even know how to get dressed when he leaves the house.
Words matter. Definitions do, too. It's a disservice to athletes when a coach conflates traits with states or can't see how trait confidence and state confidence are context-dependent. Great video and response.
Very interesting, I'm looking forward to the video on confidence! I'm curious whether the theory of predictive processing is used to understand confidence, or whether it's used in sports psychology in general. I've read a bit about it as a model for human cognition and it seems to make a lot of sense. Like, it seems to me that a confident person is predicting that they will be successful, or that they can handle whatever is thrown at them. Again, I have a very naïve understanding of it and would be very interested in learning your perspective.
This is specific to wrestling and grappling scene. Many coaches/people do not understand how skill is developed. They do not know what skill is; at least as it is measured in wrestling/grappling. Many seem to think skill is ability (vs gravity) + technique (move-sets) = skill They miss the 100% resisting opponent element to the equation. That is the only way one can measure skill in wrestling/grappling. These coaches skip many steps in the skill development progression, and believe that they have given their athletes full skill development. Preemptively or When their athletes fail to perform, these coaches implement “confidence” training/suggestions, which end up being nothing more than attempts to instill false confidence. A common ploy is to encourage dishonest affirmations. He’s explaining exposer. As far as self regulatory self confidence goes, typically something has to have happened to make that unhealthy. He talks about addressing that in the same interview. “Sports Psychology” is marketing. I’m not discounting any ‘good’ psychologists/counselors and how they market their craft.
I know the surgeon general of Sikastan doesn't lower himself to trivial matters ,but what do you think about the mental state of Ben Simmons in the NBA? What are your thoughts on the matter?
Mental strength is, in most interesting sports, literally what separates the great players from the very good ones. It's an inherently non-physical part of the whole thing. I don't know about combat sports, but every "game sport" (tennis, basketball, football etc.) comes down to decision making and mental stability at some point unless the skill levels are completely uneven.
With 15 years of work at professional sports and some rudimentary level education (20 credits uni level) in sports psychology, I think the real reason why a LOT of top end coaches, especially in individual sports have a negative perception of sports psychology, is due to very real experiences of ineffectiveness. There are a few factors to it. First, top end coaches usually coach athletes who already rate highly on various mental skills, simply due to selection. Second, most successful coaches already implement a lot of good practices sports psychology in daily practice, such as visualization, goal setting, motivation, confidence. Third, there is a LOT of bad application and downright charlatans going around in the performance psychology world, leading to bad experiences. Fourth, sports psychology is much stronger at working towards improving the athlete - environment interaction, rather than developing athletes directly, which is pretty much the polar opposite than what sports psychologists are hired to do (usually by institutions which are in charge of the fucked up environment in the first place). Sadly all this results in dismissive remarks from the pinnacle of success, which is based on true, but skewed observations.
Sports psychology is a marketing term. It’s all exposer. He said that his athletes learn and practice against the best/toughest opponents/teammates everyday, which develops their skills, and their confidence in their skills comes from that.
@@gmotwmirl Not my best meme but danaher said confidence was basically all skill, ignoring the [Self-Regulatory SC] block on the diagram, and then theres the "why would you ignore 50% of the human body" quote that started Danaher on his path to the leg attacks.
@@ItsPandatory the “self regulatory SC” needs an experience (exposer) to negatively affect someone. Danaher, talks about dealing with performance anxiety in some athletes. He seems to be fighting against the substitution of “confidence training” instead of using proper exposer and actual skill development by many wrestling and grappling coaches, who attempt to instill false confidence/dishonest affirmations.
I think lots of people are missing the main point of Danaher's point If you've done the thing a hundred times, it's easier to do the thing when it comes to competition. If you've achieved that level of skilful action very often in practice, then it should be easier to achieve in competition. Therefore his point that psychology is physical based is actually kind of true. Sure you get some people who perform under what they should in the middle of competition compared to their level of training, but on a whole it doesn't matter if you're super positive it doesn't overcome someone who is better trained. i would argue is someone is much better than someone (technically) but is less confident they're probably still going to beat them in the physical competition (whether that is a weightlifting competition or a fight-type situation)
however he is known as the best coach for his game,his student is the best in the world(likely ever)he has acted as an assistant trainer to perhaps the greatest MMA fighter ever,his previous/current team is consists of many world champions,he has trained most of them from start of there competitive careers,it nonsensical to argue against his methods,there is no definitive method,his students consistant confidence and performace is proof of the method
Both Danaher and Firas Zahabi are excellent coaches but when it comes to "alternative" forms of education they are right up there with Eddie Bravo.
Yea firas needs to stay in his lane alot when it comes to science and his strength and conditioning advice, hell of a coach but he talks shit about alot of s&c stuff and promotes some dumb training
@@MrSpicabooo the vast majority of coaches in mma and bjj gyms have such a broscience view of s&c. My first mma coach had us doing 10 minutes of rpe 11 cardio after every single class. My cardio got noticeably worse the more I trained there
@@hookoffthejab1 yea even when i started doin mma classes when i was in highschool and starting college the coaches said that strenght doesnt really matter and its all skill, but i could hold my own in grappling just off my strenght from football. I saw a video of wonderboys “s&c” and it was horrendous. Even the supposed top tier s&c coach in mma phil daru has bad training philosophy in my opinion, he bases his approach on the conjugate method and bands and stuff which is useless at best, and detrimental at worse. Not to mention the idea of “sport specific” training, too many coaches try to bring the sport to the weight room when all u need to do is get as generally strong as possible and go practice ur sport
@@MrSpicabooo That wonderboy training video is so funny. I was like “oh, ok, now i get it, why he is losing.”
@@hookoffthejab1 yeah that's a bad sign if a supposed s&c coach has you doing something day in and day out at RPE 11 with no programming for progression for progressive overload. No RPE scaling, no percentage based progression. Glad you stopped training there
Awesome video! It’s great that you dare to call out such a big name as Danaher. I think it is really important to treat popular figures with proper criticism.
fix that psych spelling homie
Okay Marge Simpson
Danaher had a solid start at "physical performance creates confidence", but his theory falls on its nose for being so incomplete. You don't need to go far from his initial position that you find a glaring contradiction. When an athlete in peak performance underperforms dramatically. His belief simply can't explain that. If he would just listen some interviews with the american olympic judoka Travis Stevens, he'd hear a story that would pretty much break his belief apart. The guy who took on jiujitsu (Danaher's own sport) after judo and performed very well there as well. One of the few who have been able to do that crossing in either direction.
To give a brief idea to the interested, Stevens lost a critical match by referee vote in the olympics, a match he should've won easily and where it was sort of implied that the referee decision wasn't as individual judgment as it should be. He was in very good condition still, but his mental state spiraled to frustration, resentment, anger, hopelessness and lacking meaning and anything you could think of. He would get booted early from even national level tournaments in america despite being an olympic level athlete, a head and shoulders above the usual competition. It took years of working with sports psychologist and working on himself and finding that meaning until he was back on the track and would be a serious challenger in the olympic games again. He was never physically short of that level, his mental state was what hurt his judo. In interviews/podcasts he talks in length about how he worked on his mental training, and you can believe me when I say that mental training was a huge part of his regular training towards olympic medal. In my interpretation he attributed a huge part of reaching that medal goal to the mental training. That his judo was always up there for medals, but he needed really good mental training to get through the kill or be killed bracket where one unlucky draw can end your medal dream, where every second of every match needs to be on point or you're out in a second. It's also what they started doing with the whole team USA olympic judo team.
The unfortunate thing about this interview in my opinion is that someone with down in the trenches experience and merits is talking about something he doesn't really understand. It's one thing to know yourself and what works for you, but you can't just jump into generalizing your personal experience and think that your experience trumps a whole field of academy. If you don't even understand what they're doing, how can you swipe it under the table so easily? I could understand bits of critique and telling about personal experiences, especially if he had studied the topic and understood what it's about, but just randomly opposing it without understanding it sets a bad example.
Enjoyable read, thanks for the comment
Yeah definitely something to learn from Travis’ story.
Interestingly, Travis is a black belt under John Danaher if I remember correctly (or at least trained under him at Renzo’s) so I’d be surprised if he didn’t know about Travis’ struggles
@@tylerheartstono Good point, makes me wonder how he ended up with the stance he has! Although I'm not sure if it ever came up and was relevant in their interaction.
John also said that confidence is rational reflection on the past experience. Which very much explains Travis's case that you mentioned (his confidence shattered because of unfortunate experience). Also as someone already said Travis is bjj black belt under Danaher, so John obviously knows Travis's story.
And don't equalise confidence to overall mental state. For example if bjj player will be forced to have a match let's say when his parents in hospital, he will obviously be in bad mental state and it will affect his performance. But it won't change his self-confidence. John supports the idea that mindset is very important to succeed in competition, he talked about GSP's mindset and how it helped him
Yea but trevis is an American Judoka. They are not that skilled in a technical sense. They don't get support like other sports so they can not realy put so much time in organic training. Travis Steven's is not the strongest mentally also. He refused to do squats in the gym because he was afraid of squats.
i don't know, but when i did a freaking hard biketrip, i just said to myself, 'they don't know me son' , and 'who's gonna carry the boats and the logs'. It took me through the whole biketrip, after the trip i almost passed out sleeping. I think the motivational speaks help to a degree, some things may help, some not. But you're right, most of them don't work. Maybe i'm just kinda weird tho 🤣🤣.
When I'm feeling weak while lifting, bar feels heavy, hands hurt etc. I tell myself "don't be a bitch. Nobody else will do it for you" and it usually works haha
What motivates me is reading about holocaust camps and other horrors that happened and how people lived in these conditions. It's something that is horrible to read but it helps my mental state a lot.
What you're describing though is a skill. You have developed the skill of continuing to do something hard for long periods of time
Not sure this really effectively calls Danaher out. He claims in his experience that increased levels of skill (competence) has led to his athletes increasing in confidence. This is heavily backed by research. The goal of sport psychology is to improve performance, confidence without competence is useless to an athlete’s performance .
Your example of the high school athlete only further emphasises his point rather than negates it. This high school player is obviously highly skilled in physical sports and as a result is highly confident. If he’s not confident in academic area this is probably due to him not being competent and putting time into practice in that area (developing academic skills).
As for Danahers claim that’s sport psychology consists of motivational videos and speeches, I think that’s a lazy conclusion from Danaher and agree with all your points on that one
I skateboarded for 10 years and have been training jiu-jitsu for nearly 8 years. I think a sport like skateboarding involves having to overcome a fear response a lot more and you can build bad habits. I would make sure to skate a rail everyday, otherwise the fear would build up. That's how you build and maintain confidence.
In both sports though, the way to build confidence is through repetition of the action you want to build confidence in. If you're scared of going for a submission, it's likely because you're not confident that you will be able to get it. The reason you're scared is probably because you think you might lose it and the other guy gets on top of you
I can tell you from experience that being physically powerful in Parkour doesn't mean **** if you don't have the mental fortitude. Sure, you can have a large standing broad jump or an impressive triple jump distance, but if you can't sprint into a 10ft jump to a rail despite being 20 - 30% more powerful than the jump calls for, then you're screwed.
Interesting to hear Danaher say this given his academic background in philosophy, guess it says more about the state of ivory tower philosophy than anything 😩
more that philosophy is not phycology
@@buffcommie942 It should at least given him critical thinking skills to navigate across and understand different disciplines 💁🏻♂
Says mostly about Danaher
@@shifty220 depends on what he studied in philosophy. It can range from logical reasoning thats similar to math to continental philosophy like marxism to ethics
@@shifty220 maybe so but it doesnt tell you that much about the discipline of philosophy in general
John Danaher doesn't understand a lot of things. He doesn't let his athletes do conditioning because you can only improve V02 max by around 2%. This shows that he thinks conditioning consists only of v02 max lol
The man that never competed talking about something he knows nothing about.
Ok so training Georges St-Pierre considered one of the greatest mixed martial artists in the UFC of all time and Gordan Ryan the greatest professional no-Gi BJJ artist in world means he knows nothing about high performance combat sport?
@@linksvexier9272 he doesn’t know what it’s like to compete . He has this idea in his head what it’s like but it’s not a reality to anyone who’s actually competed
I trust and respect Danaher in his area of expertise (jiu jitsu). Outside of that he can be ignored. Why would anyone take him seriously? He doesn't even know how to get dressed when he leaves the house.
He dosen't understand it so much that he created one of the greatest bjj teams n the world.
Who’s gunna carry the boats?!
get him daire
Words matter. Definitions do, too. It's a disservice to athletes when a coach conflates traits with states or can't see how trait confidence and state confidence are context-dependent. Great video and response.
funny how he talks about confidence and downplaying it but his best athlete is known for his confidence, like delusional confidence.
Danaher has a point but he clearly does not know what SP actually is. I
Wow. High level narrative here.
Very interesting, I'm looking forward to the video on confidence!
I'm curious whether the theory of predictive processing is used to understand confidence, or whether it's used in sports psychology in general. I've read a bit about it as a model for human cognition and it seems to make a lot of sense. Like, it seems to me that a confident person is predicting that they will be successful, or that they can handle whatever is thrown at them. Again, I have a very naïve understanding of it and would be very interested in learning your perspective.
This is specific to wrestling and grappling scene.
Many coaches/people do not understand how skill is developed. They do not know what skill is; at least as it is measured in wrestling/grappling.
Many seem to think skill is ability (vs gravity) + technique (move-sets) = skill
They miss the 100% resisting opponent element to the equation. That is the only way one can measure skill in wrestling/grappling.
These coaches skip many steps in the skill development progression, and believe that they have given their athletes full skill development. Preemptively or When their athletes fail to perform, these coaches implement “confidence” training/suggestions, which end up being nothing more than attempts to instill false confidence. A common ploy is to encourage dishonest affirmations.
He’s explaining exposer.
As far as self regulatory self confidence goes, typically something has to have happened to make that unhealthy. He talks about addressing that in the same interview.
“Sports Psychology” is marketing. I’m not discounting any ‘good’ psychologists/counselors and how they market their craft.
I know the surgeon general of Sikastan doesn't lower himself to trivial matters ,but what do you think about the mental state of Ben Simmons in the NBA? What are your thoughts on the matter?
Mental strength is, in most interesting sports, literally what separates the great players from the very good ones. It's an inherently non-physical part of the whole thing. I don't know about combat sports, but every "game sport" (tennis, basketball, football etc.) comes down to decision making and mental stability at some point unless the skill levels are completely uneven.
With 15 years of work at professional sports and some rudimentary level education (20 credits uni level) in sports psychology, I think the real reason why a LOT of top end coaches, especially in individual sports have a negative perception of sports psychology, is due to very real experiences of ineffectiveness. There are a few factors to it.
First, top end coaches usually coach athletes who already rate highly on various mental skills, simply due to selection.
Second, most successful coaches already implement a lot of good practices sports psychology in daily practice, such as visualization, goal setting, motivation, confidence.
Third, there is a LOT of bad application and downright charlatans going around in the performance psychology world, leading to bad experiences.
Fourth, sports psychology is much stronger at working towards improving the athlete - environment interaction, rather than developing athletes directly, which is pretty much the polar opposite than what sports psychologists are hired to do (usually by institutions which are in charge of the fucked up environment in the first place).
Sadly all this results in dismissive remarks from the pinnacle of success, which is based on true, but skewed observations.
Sports psychology is a marketing term.
It’s all exposer. He said that his athletes learn and practice against the best/toughest opponents/teammates everyday, which develops their skills, and their confidence in their skills comes from that.
Glad this video wasn’t just taking the pysch 😜
Any opinion on "The Inner Game of Tennis" by Timothy Gallwey?
Why would he ignore 50% of the self-confidence in sport diagram?
Curious, what are they (the remainig 50)
@@gmotwmirl Not my best meme but danaher said confidence was basically all skill, ignoring the [Self-Regulatory SC] block on the diagram, and then theres the "why would you ignore 50% of the human body" quote that started Danaher on his path to the leg attacks.
@@ItsPandatory the “self regulatory SC” needs an experience (exposer) to negatively affect someone.
Danaher, talks about dealing with performance anxiety in some athletes.
He seems to be fighting against the substitution of “confidence training” instead of using proper exposer and actual skill development by many wrestling and grappling coaches, who attempt to instill false confidence/dishonest affirmations.
I think lots of people are missing the main point of Danaher's point
If you've done the thing a hundred times, it's easier to do the thing when it comes to competition. If you've achieved that level of skilful action very often in practice, then it should be easier to achieve in competition. Therefore his point that psychology is physical based is actually kind of true. Sure you get some people who perform under what they should in the middle of competition compared to their level of training, but on a whole it doesn't matter if you're super positive it doesn't overcome someone who is better trained.
i would argue is someone is much better than someone (technically) but is less confident they're probably still going to beat them in the physical competition (whether that is a weightlifting competition or a fight-type situation)
ρгό𝔪σŞm
first !!!
however he is known as the best coach for his game,his student is the best in the world(likely ever)he has acted as an assistant trainer to perhaps the greatest MMA fighter ever,his previous/current team is consists of many world champions,he has trained most of them from start of there competitive careers,it nonsensical to argue against his methods,there is no definitive method,his students consistant confidence and performace is proof of the method
dog, John is an MIT Graduate with a PHD in philosophy. I'll take his opinion over yours sorry
Danaher is 100% incorrect on this one. He sounds bitter