John Will 6th Dan BJJ Coach

Is He The Best Coach?
Of course ive not trained with all of them so how do I know? But please check out the podcast discussion below, it’s a good listen.
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BUT, he’s for sure the most precise, detailed coach with an engineers approach I’ve ever had the pleasure to learn with.
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I first met John in Lincoln at a little club on Portland St, I didn’t believe he was legit or should say I didn’t believe the seminar advertised was legit. I mean a 4th Dan (now 6th) BJJ coach on Portland st Lincoln? Come on.
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So I went along, I kind of gate crashed to be honest, and as soon as I started to listen to his coaching, I knew this was special. The moment the seminar finished i was on the phone with my good friend Tony Davis excitedly telling him about this BJJ coach with an engineering approach to coaching with a very cool history. Believe me, this was at the time a very rare thing.
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10 minutes later I received a message from John inviting me to the Sheffield seminar the next day, I didn’t need to pursue Tony to meet me there, and that was the beginning of a wonderful BJJ journey and friendship.
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8 years ago now? I think?
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The following year we booked John at our academy and so did Tony, we called around our friends Wayne Stokes, Nathan Leverton, and others and they all jumped on board and we’re just as impressed as we were. They knew John was something special in the world of coaching and in the world of BJJ coaching a rare animal indeed.
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John At FF HQ Lincoln

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From that year onwards, myself and Tony would meet John on arrival to the UK and basically go on a 2-week tour around the UK training at every seminar he taught, sometimes 2 seminars in one day, it was fantastic.
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I look forward to this road trip each year, not just for the training but for spending time with my friends whom I now consider John to be one of. We mostly do not talk BJJ when travelling, we talk about the world, and life and family and food, Natas, hedgehogs, coffee, politics, music, Grimsby and Scunthorpe, dialects and accents.

Lunch Time Coombe Abbey

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I’ll go back to my hotel room with Tony each night after a Nandos late dinner and we go over the work from the day’s seminars, end up training Muay Thai in the Lobby, fall to sleep and wake up to roll around for several hours and travel a few hundred miles and do it all again, like excited kids we play until we drop.
So is John the best instructor in the world?
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Well, he’s the one who’s lifted our club culture and inspired us to pay attention to the details on the mats and off. In a world of ego’s and politics he’s the one who cuts through the BS and nonsense, he’s the one who makes the complex possible for everyone, the one who leaves no confusion in any sentence, who says what he thinks in a self-censoring world, who brings along his story to his teachings like no one else, the one who can draw a direct line between technique and your finances.
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He coaches concepts that transcend the mats into daily life, and for me and Function First, that IS martial arts and that’s why we resonated and that’s why I will be travelling to Aus each year to train and spend time, on the mats and off with John. I was due last year but hey, pandemic.
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So to summarise, yeah, he’s pretty good to be fair, but I still can’t tie my belt correctly.
Listen to "Is This The Best Instructor Today? World of Martial Arts SHOW" on Spreaker.