Issue 104

August 2013

How does a former marching band teacher become one of the most sought-after MMA coaches in the world? John Crouch explains how he went from music to mixed martial arts

LEADING MAN

The MMA Lab Head Coach

As he sits in his office after teaching an early-morning BJJ class at The MMA Lab in Glendale, Arizona, head coach John Crouch is in a reflective mood. Reclining in his chair with a wide grin on his face he looks at the pictures spread around the room. Images of Crouch with some of the greatest jiu-jitsu practitioners in history; the people who taught him the same skills he shares today with his students, such as UFC 155lb champ Benson Henderson.

His success and expertise in MMA would suggest he’s been a martial artist since birth. But before Crouch fell for jiu-jitsu, his first love was another art form – albeit a less violent one. 

“I was a music guy growing up. I went to college as a music major,” he says as he shows off the awards he’s won. “I’m a band nerd and I taught a high school marching band for 10 years. I still create visual programs for people, though not too many anymore as I’m really busy.”

So what put a self-confessed ‘band nerd’ on the path to becoming one of the most well respected coaches in mixed martial arts? “My mom bought me a taekwondo membership when I was 28, I went to that and absolutely loved it. My instructor at the time was a police officer and he’d gone to the Gracie Academy to get certified into their grappling program.

“He came back and taught me some jiu-jitsu and I fell in love with it. I thought it was awesome. My brother is a cop in Orange County, California, so I went out for the summer and stayed with him so I could train at the Gracie Academy two-to-three times a day. I liked it so much that I applied for the instructor program and the next summer I moved out there and lived there for six years.”

Luckily for Crouch, when he moved to California to study BJJ he was learning from the best. From Royce and Rorian Gracie to Carlos ‘Caique’ Elias, Crouch was rubbing shoulders with BJJ legends. And he even got to spend time with the man many refer to as the grandmaster of the art, Helio Gracie.

“It was incredible how much knowledge he had and how much love he had for the sport,” Crouch recalls. “He was very old but he always had his gi on and he was always jumping on the mat to help people. We’d be in the room having some fun sparring and he’d just open the door, sit down and then start helping you with positions that you were stuck in.”

Once his time in California came to an end, Crouch moved back home to Denver, Colorado. Even though he’d opened his own jiu-jitsu school and found relative success, an offer from a former training partner at the Gracie Academy to become the MMA coach at a start-up gym in Arizona proved hard to resist. 

Sick of shoveling snow off his driveway every weekend, he and his family packed up and moved to Glendale. He took with him a young and enthusiastic lightweight called Benson Henderson. According to Crouch, he had noticed Henderson’s potential long before.

Six-and-a-half years have passed since they began working with one another and it’s fair to say the partnership has become quite the force in the UFC’s 155lb division. Obviously Benson’s skills as a fighter have grown significantly, but a key facet to their success is Crouch’s ability to get under Henderson’s skin and get a performance out of him.

“I know Benson pretty well. We’ve been working together for a long time and we see each other every day, three times a day. I kinda know what makes him tick, and being competitive makes him tick,” Crouch explains. “When he fought Frankie (Edgar) for the title in Japan and I asked him if he had five minutes, I don’t know if people saw the look he gave me, but he was like, ‘Of course I’ve got five minutes.’ So I said it again to get him going even more and it really did.

“Honestly, I wish he’d been a little bit more aggressive, I wish I could’ve said something better. I always want to try and improve on my performance as well. If you look at the great coaches in the sport, and I aspire to be one of those one day, the likes of Greg Jackson and Firas Zahabi, I watch all of those guys,”

Crouch adds: “I’d like to be a great game-time coach, and I’m working on it. But when you get to talk to these guys, like Greg Jackson, who are super smart, every time I get with him I try to steal anything I can get from him.”

Even with his great success helping train Henderson to WEC and UFC titles, Crouch still remains the most humble man in the room. For him, the most important things are that his students at The MMA Lab “give good effort immediately and try to get better for tomorrow” and that he’s able to usher in some of the more unknown talent, including Chris Gruetzemacher and Randy Steinke, to the big league. 

Of course, winning titles and earning plaudits are great, but Crouch believes his most important goal will bring him and his team everything they want. “I hope we keep enjoying what we’re doing; that’s really the focus. My goal is to still have fun and still enjoy what we’re doing because if we are then we’ll be successful and everything else won’t matter.”