For Iowa City martial arts fighter, coaching offers salvation after rare heart diagnosis

IOWA CITY — Growing up in the Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago, Danny Arroyo knew he had to get out.

As he watched friends get mugged, shot, stabbed and killed in an area rife with gang violence, he cried himself to sleep trying to figure out how to afford college. With overworked parents, he forged signatures on permission slips to play sports after school and stay out of trouble.

Before long, he figured out sports — first boxing, then baseball — were his ticket out. In 2004, he earned enough scholarships to afford Coe College in Cedar Rapids.

“Where I come from, you’re not supposed to go to college,” said Arroyo, 36. “All of my friends back home are in jail or dead.”

But after growing up in an all Black and Hispanic high school, the Puerto Rican’s postgraduate education in Iowa was more of a shock than a welcome change. In his first week living at the dorms, nobody wanted to room with him as he got called every slur in the book. As the only minority in his fraternity and the only Latino on his baseball team, racially-charged treatment lurked at every corner.

“ ’You’re going to play ball in someone else’s backyard. You will be tolerated, but you won’t be accepted,’ ” he recalled his father telling him. “And it’s something that’s reigned true my whole entire time here. Even (until now), to an extent.”

Finding his spark

With an anger that carried through college, he was on academic probation virtually every semester. Physical responses to slurs were something he had to learn how to suppress as he navigated a predominantly white world.

By 2008, he graduated with a triple major and assimilated to conventional success by climbing the ladder at a nonprofit and getting married. But after two years of a desk job where he wore a suit, the athlete gained 60 pounds and his mental health declined.

A gym opening up across the street with boxing classes sparked the ignition he needed to enjoy life again. Before long, he was competing, coaching students in martial arts and working jobs at Whirlpool and Quaker Oats where he could work with his hands.

For a while, he thought he could have it all. He worked 60-hour weeks, competed as a champion in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, taught students and raised his first son on two to three hours of sleep every night — redlining for a decade.

“That’s the only thing I saw growing up,” Arroyo said. “You work your fingers to the bone, and then some.”

In November 2021, he collapsed while getting lunch.

Life-changing diagnosis

Rushed to the hospital with a heart rate of 255 beats a minute, his heart was surgically ablated to correct the arrhythmia.

Last year, he was diagnosed with arrythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy — or ARVC, a rare genetic condition that can cause sudden death. The median life expectancy with ARVC is 41 years.

“When you get a higher heart rate, your heart expands. I’m missing that gene, so my heart is separating, causing scar tissue around my heart,” he explained. “This is what’s going to kill me.”

Four heart surgeries later, he now has a defibrillator in his chest that can help him live longer. But living longer also means stopping strenuous activities that make the disease progress — switching from jiu-jitsu choke moves like “the guillotine” to nothing more than croquet, darts or brisk walks.

After being unable to continue his line job at Quaker Oats last July due to health risks and being unable to provide for his family, Arroyo had to choose between doing what he lived for and doing what would keep him alive.

“I lost who I was. I almost lost my mind,” he said. “I called the University (of Iowa) scream-crying for (mental) help.”

Lifesaving move

The same strenuous sports that went against doctor’s orders were what helped Arroyo find himself again. But this time, it’s helping others fall in love with the sport.

With fees less than half of other gyms in the area, the coach keeps Arroyo Grappling Academy in Iowa City accessible to everyone — particularly people of color and those who can’t afford other gyms or don’t feel comfortable in them. If they can’t attend in person, he uploads training videos to the website for free, dismantling a form of gatekeeping he said is prevalent in the martial arts training community.

“I just want to try to make people fall in love with martial arts like I fell in love with it, because it changed my life,” Arroyo said. “I wish I had someone that cared about me when I was that age — not only a coach who wanted me to win the game but wanted me to excel as a man and a citizen of the community.”

Whether he’s giving rides to students before and after class, reaching into his own pocket to help them afford classes and competitions, bailing students out or jail or helping young adults struggling with homelessness, the coach has gone beyond the job title. Arroyo does it all without putting on airs, because it’s a calling, not a 9-to-5.

“Yes, he’s their coach. But at the same time, he doesn’t see himself as being a master,” said George Chamberlain, a 25-year boxing coach who known Arroyo for 10 years and worked alongside him in the same gym for about five. “Danny has found that he’s a form of service — a way to give back.”

Why he’s different

One difference in Arroyo’s classes is the dismantling of the traditional formality inherent to many martial arts classes — especially a hierarchy some students say makes other coaches above reproach.

By building authentic community and helping students find the potential they can’t see in themselves, Chamberlain said, the coach has managed to channel the prowess he had as an athlete into being a better coach and mentor.

“It’s about the human effort and making people see who they are, not who they’re perceived to be,” said Chamberlain, 51.

After facing a similar heart problem a year ago that prompted adjustments, Chamberlain identifies with Arroyo’s challenge. But in his colleague’s case, the shift had to be made on a dime — not over years or decades as an athlete ages out of competitions and becomes a coach.

“Legacy is all we’re going to leave behind,” Chamberlain said.

Female students say his academy gives them the ability to be comfortable in an arena that often puts the onus on them to adjust for the comfort of men. Integrating women into the same classes as men, Arroyo has prioritized feedback from women that affords them the same respect in a room where they’re often outnumbered — like a policy that prevents them from being bombarded with date requests.

“(Other) coaches are untouchable and you can’t say a damn thing,” said Ally Loren, founder of the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Club at the University of Iowa. “With Danny, he’s one of us and wants us to feel safe.”

In a sport known for hypermasculinity, Arroyo talks about how he’s excited to get a pumpkin spice latte or the scrunchies he buys to keep back his long hair. Spanish speakers speak freely in their native tongue without side eye, and an LGBTQ Pride flag stays on their wall — an unusual fixture for a gym.

As students of all colors and types build confidence in a safe space that prioritizes them, the ability to live authentically leaches out into their lives outside the gym, too.

“People say ‘be yourself’ and you roll your eyes because everyone says it,” said Loren, 21. “But it’s different to live it and see it every single time with every single student that walks in the door.”

Since Arroyo’s diagnosis, she has watched his mindset go from “this is for me” to “this is for the kids — I want to leave a good mark on the world.”

Life or death

Reaching about 100 students per year, Arroyo teaches the mechanics of martial arts that students have used to defend themselves in dangerous situations.

For people of color, he’s building a space to help them navigate the world in a way that he had to figure out on his own.

Perhaps one of the greatest ironies is that in teaching his kids how to fight others with techniques that can kill, he’s giving them the confidence to know how to de-escalate and avoid violence whenever possible.

“It means they can survive here in this type of environment,” he said — instead of fighting in school, fighting on the streets or getting arrested when they react to the same slurs he was called.

Nearly 20 years after he arrived, Arroyo stays in Iowa because he knows it doesn’t have to be like that.

He wants others to realize Iowa can be their home, too.

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