Broadway Jiu-Jitsu’s John Clarke on Life, Leadership and Loyalty

“The more you invest in the preparation – the more bitter the loss can be – but also the greater the victory is. Because you know you risked everything and the potential result was finding out you’re not as good as you think you are – or you are as good as you think you are and you proved what you can do.”

John Clarke – the head coach and owner of Broadway Jiu-Jitsu in South Boston, Massachusetts – is a prime and pure example of mastering and modernizing martial arts. A Black Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under the acclaimed Carlson Gracie lineage as well as a proud and proficient business owner, Clarke embodies the essence of bushido: dedication, loyalty, honor, humility and self-awareness.

Clarke is also the main cornerman for Ultimate Fighting Championship Featherweight standout Kyle Bochniak (8-4-0) – undefeated under Rhode Island-based Classic Entertainment & Sports (CES) prior to signing with the UFC as a literal last-minute replacement against fellow Boston fighter Charles Rosa (11-3-0) at UFC Fight Night: Dillashaw vs. Cruz in Boston, Massachusetts. Bochniak earned his fifth professional victory just nine days prior to dropping his first career loss against Rosa as an Unanimous Decision.

Balancing his commitment to his community, his own martial arts path as well as the path of some of the top mixed martial artist practitioners in New England, Clarke is responsible for impacting the lives of a significant amount of noble men, women and children. This year alone, Clarke:

• won First Place at the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation – Miami International Winter Open
• won Gold at the New York Open
• competed in the Masters World Championship
• competing at the Nashville Open in November as preparation for the upcoming European Championship
• helped secure consecutive CES victories for former UFC Bantamweight and The Ultimate Fighter Season 14 contestant Tateki Matsuda (15-9-0) at CES 54 in January and CES 57 in July

Most recently, Clarke is preparing Bochniak for his Octagon return to the TD Garden on October 18 for UFC on ESPN 6 where Bochniak is scheduled to face the undefeated Sean Woodson (6-0-0), making his own official UFC debut after earning a contract on Dana White‘s The Contender Series Week 5 as a late-replacement.

Strategizing with Bochniak, scouting for Matsuda, building his business and walking his own path of martial arts, Clarke is an integral and simply necessary reason why New England mixed martial arts are amongst the best in the world. Between balancing all of his endeavors, Clarke took the time to discuss personal growth, violence, leadership and what he owes to jiu-jitsu.

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ON LEARNING OUTSIDE OF GYM

My first attempt at college I was a Philosophy major, so I was really into that. I left high school being really into Philosophy, and I started school as a Philosophy major. Then I left school and traveled around a little bit. When I came back, I had changed majors because in the two years that I took off from school, I realized there weren’t going to be a lot of opportunities other than law school or teaching with a Philosophy degree. So then I thought, “Let me just get in and out of here as fast as possible.” So I went and did a Communications degree.

And honestly the things I do outside of the gym: I try to do things – because obviously this is my livelihood – I can glean some sort of lesson that is applicable. So when I read things – like guys who read fiction and they’re taking about Game of Thrones – I think to myself, “Where the fuck do you guys get the time to do stuff that doesn’t benefit all the aspects of your life?” I don’t have time for any of that stuff.

So while not everything’s one-hundred percent work, when I read things I’m trying to read things I can learn and maybe apply some things to jiu-jitsu.

Right now I’m reading this book on game theory; it’s interesting and it’s not necessarily one-hundred percent applicable to running a business, but some of the decision-making processes are really applicable to when two people are striking. And you’re trying to make a decision based not only on what you want to do but based on what you think your opponent is going to do. So there’s a lot of things there, and I’m still trying to flesh all that stuff out.

Try to get creative: I play bass a little bit; I’m not very good. It’s a really interesting thing, because I find lessons I can take as a new student trying to play a musical instrument and try to use the lessons I’m learning from in music to try to talk to guys in martial arts. For example: I talk about beats in striking. Beginning strikers – everything’s a quarter-note. Boom…boom…boom…boom. We talk about varying the tempo, varying the pace and varying the time.

My bass instructor one time told me something really cool about playing a baseline. He’s like, “It’s not where you are. Don’t stop on every single note. It’s about where you’re going; get through it.” I try to use that in jiu-jitsu when I teach. I say, “Hey man, you made a mistake. Don’t stop and say, ‘Oh crap, I fucked this all up.’ Figure out a way to make it work and still get to the end of what you’re doing and make it as good as you can. When you stop in the middle of it, it’s going to be a disaster.”

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“He’s been there since Day One; I have extreme loyalty towards him. He’s extremely knowledgeable, been there through the fight game and hardships throughout my life; he was at my wedding. It’s a very tight relationship. We definitely got each other’s backs and I don’t trust anyone more with my future in their hands.” – Kyle Bochniak (8-4-0), UFC Featherweight, UFC 223: Khabib vs. Iaquinta Fight of the Night Winner

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ON VIOLENCE

I read lots of stuff on violence, because violence is something that gets… Obviously bad violence is bad, just like lots of bad varieties of different things are bad. But violence in general is something that is misunderstood and as a society we need to start to embrace it a little bit more – the good aspects of it. 

However a society decides something is good or something is bad, a lot of times an idea gets stick with it. Sex and violence together are the two most primal things and urges that we have; they’re both just about self-preservation. They both can be used in a bad context and can be used in a beautiful context. More often than not, people don’t see the beautiful context that violence can be used in. It can be used in so many great things: self-preservation, it defines social hierarchies, it can literally save your life if you know how to harness it. But because violence is used so negatively in society, the only time anyone really embraces it is when they can make money on it – pop culture, movies, things like that.

What we need to be doing is teaching our kids boxing, wrestling, things like that so they have an understanding in a controlled environment what violence is and how powerful it is. And therefore, if they chose to later on in life they can harness it. The worst thing in the world would be somebody walking down the street and a guy comes up to you, shoves you into the wall and says, “Hey, give me your money” and that’s the first time any human being’s ever put their hands on you. You don’t know what to do and now no matter what happens, you’re automatically the victim.

From a younger age, we need to embrace more controlled violence; that would help a lot of things out.

There are aggressive kids in school that when they grow up, the aggressive kids define the social hierarchy in, like, fifth grade, right? Because they’ll yell and scream; maybe they’re a little bit bigger. But certain kids will fall into line and they’ll almost be subordinate; you’ll get a bully and a bully victim. But when you put all of those kids in wrestling class or whatever, you build confidence. People understand that the guy who yells all the time isn’t the guy who necessarily would be defining the social hierarchy as opposed to the guy who in that context will smash your face.

People need to be less afraid of violence.

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“Honestly, I have been jealous about true master-and-student relationship between JC and Kyle. I never forget Kyle Bochniak gave me a hand when I was homeless fighter and John Clarke welcomed me to under the roof without any word and asking what happened to me. Since then, I have made a oath of my own volition devoting my life and soul to him and his team. JC is a true martial artist as a student, competitor and coach.” – Tateki Matsuda (15-9), first Japanese competitor on The Ultimate Fighter

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ON INTRODUCTION TO MARTIAL ARTS

I was in sixth grade and there was a block in my gym class for wrestling. I was a big WWF wrestling fan and I was in the Cub Scouts, and we went to a Yale wrestling match. I was like, “What the hell is this?” because I was looking for Randy Savage and Koko B. Ware and stuff. So I was already familiar with real, folk style wrestling at a really young age. In seventh grade, in my middle school you were forced to play a sport; everyone had to play a Fall, Winter and Spring sport. I had gone to the basketball team and I was going to play basketball; that day, the wrestling coach came down and said, “Hey, we need some wrestlers.” And the basketball coach I had a good relationship with – because he was also the Dean of Students and so I was in trouble a little bit sometimes and I’d have to go into his office. He was joking around and said, “Hey, take Clarke. He’s going to suck at basketball anyway.” Here I am: in seventh grade, a bitter little kid. I said, “You know what? Screw it.” And so I went upstairs and I wrestled.

And that was the hardest goddamn thing I had ever done in my life. I tried so hard to quit, and my Dad said, “You are not quitting in the middle of the season. If you want to play basketball next year, you’re more than welcome to do that. But you’re not quitting in the middle of this. You’re going to finish it.” That was it.

I remember having my first match and at that time, the Karate Kid was a big thing and VisionQuest had come out. I started wrestling and that was it. I fell in love with wrestling.

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ON ACCOUNTABILITY WITHIN MARTIAL ARTS

It’s about accountability. Wrestling is probably the greatest thing in the world for kids growing up, because the single-greatest thing you can get from that is the idea of accountability. You go out on the wrestling mats and you’re wearing this tiny, little outfit, your balls are hanging out for everyone to see and your undeveloped little body; you’re nervous and you’re a little kid. You got to go out there in front of everybody against another little kid who’s your size – and theoretically has somewhat the same experience as you – and there’s only one other guy out there and that’s a referee.

You win and lose on your own merit. When you lose, it’s not because the quarterback got picked off; it’s not because someone struck out in the ninth inning. You lose because the person across from you at that moment in time beat you. And so you have to be accountable for that.

One of the lessons I try to impart upon all my students is when you go to compete, the process up until the competition is as much about eliminating the excuses as anything else. If you do all your cardio, you can’t look back after a loss and say, “I didn’t do my cardio.” If you do all your strength and conditioning – same thing. If you do all your technique… you can’t look back and say, “Well, I didn’t do X-Y-Z.” So preparation is in part getting ready for the contest, but it’s also getting you ready for after the contest. Eliminating the excuses most people look back on when the performance didn’t go their way, right? The problem with a lot of people is you’re only left with two options at that point: “I fucked up” or “That person on that day was better than me.” And that’s a really, really tough pill for people to swallow. And so people subconsciously don’t do everything they can in preparation for an event because they’d much rather have that to lean back on and say, “Oh, my girlfriend was giving me a hard time” or this and that.

You know what? Fucking dump her. If she’s in your way, get her out of here. You’ve got to eliminate those excuses and people don’t want to do that because then you’re left there and you have to be accountable for the fact someone beat you because they were better. It’s a tough thing to do, but you’ve got to eliminate all the excuses. And then the victory is that much sweeter when you know you’ve invested so much into the preparation. The more you invest in the preparation – the more bitter the loss can be – but also the greater the victory is. Because you know you risked everything and the potential result was finding out you’re not as good as you think you are – or you are as good as you think you are and you proved what you can do.

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ON STUDENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP

I hear a lot of marital arts people talk about: “You owe your students”; you owe this, you owe that. That’s correct: you owe your students as a person who provides a service to them. That’s your baseline relationship. You come in, you pay a dollar amount – I provide these classes for you. That’s the baseline.

You go above and beyond that when students go above and beyond that. One of the things people don’t understand is the student-teacher relationship is a two-way street – and a lot of times the person in charge of that is the student. If there’s a student who comes in and says, “Hey man, I want to come in once a week. I want to do jiu-jitsu, I want to go and I want to leave” and that guy pays your fee? That’s fine. That’s where they want to leave the relationship? Perfect. You also have students that will come in and ask you for extra time; they’ll ask you for this and to go this tournament, that tournament. It’s up to you how much you want to give back to that student based on what they’re giving to you.

You don’t have to be the most talented student. But when I see a person who’s trying over and and over and over to do something, I’m more-likely to help that person who comes in all the time – regardless of if they’re good or they’re less talented – than over the guy who comes in once a week and wants to ask me all the key questions to jiu-jitsu that he could answer with a little bit more time on the mat.

I like to tell the guys: “It’s taken me twenty years and tens of thousands of dollars to learn these things I’m trying to help you guys to learn and I can’t give it to you in thirty minutes for free after class.” I just can’t; it’s impossible. One of the other things is you owe your students; you owe the loyal students even more; you owe the students you have a relationship with even more.

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ON DEBT TO JIU-JITSU

But more than that – and a lot of instructors miss this point – I got a pretty cool fucking life. I get to teach jiu-jitsu, I get to go to the gym, I get to go all over the world and do these cool things – to me, I owe jiu-jitsu. I don’t owe the individual student. Yes, I want to do the best thing for all my students and I want to help all of them reach whatever their individual goals might be.

But I owe jiu-jitsu. And the way I repay jiu-jitsu is I teach it the best I can. By doing that, your students will hopefully reap the benefits of you doing the best job you can.

I could be digging a ditch somewhere, I could be sitting in an office somewhere – I could be doing a lot of shitty things that are not nearly as cool as doing jiu-jitsu all day. I try to teach it the best way I can – the way my instructor taught me jiu-jitsu should be taught. And sometimes that’s a little bit different than how people teach it now, and by doing that I hope the result is my students can absorb as much material is possible.

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ON INAUTHENTICITY

We have a ton of students now, we’re pretty lucky. But part of the process is uncovering what the student really wants. Because almost never does a student come in here and do their real goals and intentions match what comes out of his or her mouth. That never fucking happens, right?

Some people want to be fighters, and some people want to be known as fighters on Facebook and Instagram. It’s a humungous thing. And while I hate that side of the sport, it probably drives a good percentage of people just to pay the fees. Because they’re not really paying to learn a martial art, they’re paying to post on Instagram and make their friends think they know martial arts. All your friends that don’t do MMA or jiu-jitsu or judo, they don’t fucking know what you’re doing. So when you post it on Instagram, they think you just won Worlds! They don’t know that you signed up and took Silver in a two-man division somewhere; you post a wall of text about how hard you trained. Dude, you signed up and lost one match and got a Silver. You didn’t win the Silver – you fucking lost Gold!

So we have to try to reconcile through the process of learning what the goals really are. And generally, I don’t even listen to people anymore with what they say; I watch their actions and I see what they do. And that tells me how dedicated they are and what I should be dedicating back to them. 

The number of people that come in and say, “I want to do MMA”… Listen, you don’t have any experience, it’s called mixed martial arts. How are you going to mix them if you don’t know any of them? So start in jiu-jitsu and Muay Thai, learn a little bit and then tell me what you think about MMA. Almost never do they go to MMA; they almost exclusively gravitate towards jiu-jitsu or Muay Thai – the two big ones these days. They realize doing MMA is really, really hard.

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“John Clarke knows his shit. Every time I’m in John’s class I learn something new.” – Andres Rodriguez III (4-0), 14th ranked of 59 active New England Pro Bantamweights

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ON LEADERSHIP

They always say lead from the front. I always say that. I’m still an active jiu-jitsu competitor, I still get out there and do tournaments, I don’t put it on Facebook; I do it the way I would I want my students to do it. You train hard – people in the gym notice you’re training hard. People in the gym will say, “What are you doing? Oh, you’re going to compete in New York this weekend? Oh, cool.” You won’t see me put it on Facebook or any of that stuff, because for me: competition is for myself.

I love to compete. And the way I go about it is the way I would hope my students go about it.

Doing this a long time, I’ve obviously had a bunch of surgeries. I’ve had both ACL’s repaired; next day after both surgeries, I’m in here sitting on a box on the side of a mat pointing and yelling and teaching. I almost never take a day off; if I’m not here it’s because I’m doing something … traveling for competitions or whatever else it is. I try to do it the way I would want my students to do it. We try to train really hard here at the appropriate times, so you’ll very rarely see me quit, whether I feel like shit or whatever it is.

I try to train the right way, teach the right way. And really be honest with the students; tell them, “I don’t know every technique in the world.” And sometimes when you’re honest about that, it goes a long way towards building a relationship with your students. Being honest about jiu-jitsu and the things that are relevant to being on the mat. I’m not one of these guys that thinks a martial arts instructor should be some spiritual fucking guru and you should watch what they do in all aspects of their life, because no one’s perfect.

I’m honest and try not to make any excuses; I’m a big not-excuse maker.

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ON ELIMINATING EXCUSES

When we do our live-go’s at the gym, you don’t get to just say, “I’m going to take this round off.” That doesn’t exist here. So we generally do three-man groups so everyone gets a prescribed round of rest; you’re in for two and you’re out for one. That should be enough rest for you. You’re resting for one round. If what you need is a rest in addition to that, you’re screwing the integrity of the group and you’re kind of screwing over your training partners. So I’ll try and get students to fulfill their obligation to their group and tell them: if you’re injured, there really is no injury that’s going to heal in five minutes. What you’re telling me is you just want an extra rest and you’re masking it behind, “Oh, I twisted my ankle. But miraculously, my ankle will be better in five minutes.” What you’re really saying is you want a rest, right?

So what we always say here is: if you’re injured enough that you need to take a round off, you should probably take the rest of the night off. Just get off the mats. There’s difference between hurt and being injured. You can still train hurt; you can find a way through the round if you’re hurt. But injured is a different story, and that will cause you to take rounds off.

Our big saying here is “Tired is not an injury.” You don’t get to take rounds off because you’re tired. Find a way. Find a way through it.

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ON STUDENT vs FAN PERSPECTIVE

I watch a lot of MMA now, but I’d say eighty percent of the MMA that I watch isn’t because I’m interested in the fight. There’s a handful of fighters I won’t miss still, but a lot of the MMA I watch now is to see what are the new techniques guys are doing. Everything is an imitation game, right? Whether it’s jiu-jitsu or MMA or whatever: you want to see what the current techniques are because you’ve got to be ready for those guys when you’re coaching students; you want to be able to address the issues when your students say, “Hey, did you see you this over the weekend?” So I watch a lot of it as a student, and really that determines when I watch it.

If I’m interested in it as a fan, I’m going to watch it on Saturday night; I’m going to get a pizza and I’m going to sit there and watch it and be pumped. But if I’m watching it as a student, I’ll watch it during the day; I’ll find another way to watch it. GSP is a great example: to me, he never got me amped up enough to watch his fights on Saturday night and pop for the Pay-Per-View unless his opponent was someone I really liked. But from a student’s perspective, I will never miss a GSP fight because I’ve got to see what he’s doing. It’s perfect, his strategy’s great – he’s a great fighter and a great competitor and stuff like that. So there’s two sides to that: watching it as a student and watching it as a fan of the sport. But it’s definitely always evolving.

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ON CONTINUING TO LEARN

One of the benefits is jiu-jitsu’s always evolving. Look: no matter what business you’re in, you either evolve or you die. It doesn’t matter what it is; you’ve got to stay with what’s current and what’s changing. As you get a little bit older, the personalities of the students change; you get older but the students start staying the same age. These guys are coming in the door roughly around the same age as you were when you started.

In terms of teaching: I have really good students here that push me; I’m really fortunate in that way. And I have students who are younger and are up on all the new stuff; I have students that will come in every Monday and be like, “Hey, did you see this event this weekend?” And as jiu-jitsu evolves, it’s my responsibility to stay up on as much stuff as I can in order to be able to teach it. Especially for my students who are competitors: I can’t teach just the jiu-jitsu that was done twenty years ago. The game has changed. Not that it’s not applicable – it’s all still applicable. But because they don’t see it on highlight reels, they don’t want to do it. Whatever’s on the highlight reel is what students want to do. They’re not interested in learned hip escapes and guard retention; they’re interested in inverting and jumping on shit.

Having really good students that can push you is a huge key to staying current in jiu-jitsu.

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Special thank you to Kelly MacDonald Lendall (CrossFace Productions)

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