He has one of the best coaches and some of the best training partners in the world. Plus, his gym is by far the highest level group of guys focusing exclusively on no-gi open rules sub only as a style, so he walks on the mat with a huge advantage in that rule set against guys who train at comparable gyms (Atos, for example) but which are focused primarily on training for other types of competitions. The final factor is that BJJ is a tiny sport relative to something like basketball, the talent pool is quite small and the number of people who train full time much smaller still, so you don't have to be a crazy prodigy to rise to the top of that world pretty quickly (and let's be clear, even among people who train full time Ryan is only at the top in his very limited world of open rules sub only tournaments). A guy with even a little talent and a lot of work ethic who trains full time with the guys he trains with is going to be competitive at the top level very quickly.