Danaher’s Armbar System: The Crossroads to the Legs and Neck.
It’s everything you’re already doing, just slightly better.
Although this System in the last in Danaher’s System series, it’s at the top of my list of BJJ instructionals. It gave me the perspective I needed to integrate my armbars into the rest of my Jiu Jitsu.
In martial arts, speed and timing vie for supremacy with strength and precision. Everyone agrees that if you have enough of category A you don’t need category B, but in combat resources are limited and combat science rests on finding the optimal mixture of both. In his latest DVD “Enter the System: The Armbar” John Danaher balances speed based and position based armbar mechanics in order to create a system of armbar attacks that makes the goal of hyper-extending the elbow, a joy to pursue.
The sad paradox of athletics is that the stability required to generate power also produces friction which reduces speed. Likewise, the careful positioning required to maintain a powerful position impairs timing by reducing freedom of movement and informing the opponent of one's intentions. Danaher’s intelligent treatment of this dichotomy allows his DVD to add real value even as it treats one of the most widely explored areas of Jiu Jitsu.
Danaher encourages the student to see positional (slow) armbars as primary, and speed based (fast) armbars as supplementary. This allows the student to pursue straight armlocks as a primary means of attack from all primary control positions back mount, closed guard, side control ect., while also using the submission for its secondary purpose: Punishing the opponent for carelessly reaching out with their hands.
Personally, I found this extremely helpful. Over time, my armbar usage had evolved to primarily punish opponents for careless actions. I even found myself trying to bait opponents into extending their arms. This was a self-defeating strategy because it turned a means of putting the opponent on the defensive into a passive tactic. Danaher’s perspective on this topic has helped me adapt the intuitive skills I developed to grab arms quickly and apply it to a positional based approach which allows me to attack defensive opponents that are too smart to take my bait.
The best illustration I can give is Danaher’s version of the shoulder-trap armbar from guard. I was awar of this technique but had mostly abandoned it because I was unable to overcome my oponent’s standard resistance. I’d given up on the attack in favour of an assortment of quick armbars that relied on timeing my oponent’s error. Danaher’s tutorial lays out the various stages of the shoulder lock armbar process in such detail that I was able to return to the technique, fix my mechanical errors and begin armbaring people who were putting up strong and intelligent resistence. The ability to force the technique rather than simply “snatch” it at an opportune moment, has changed my armbar game from an defensive one based on timing, to an offensive one based on the power of leverage and position. This feels much more like grown-up Jiu Jitsu, because it doesn’t rely on my oponent knowing less than I do.
The Tutorial provides a comprehensive arsenal of armbar attacks, each one presented as a series of mechanical problems to be solved in sequence. The overall effect is that a person familiar with the method will never encounter a position from which an armbar attempt seems impossible, and will never encounter a stage of an armbar attack where the most efficient means for progress toward the finish is ambiguous. At the same time the system allows puts us in position to punish errors with rapid attacks, without wasting mental bandwidth on baiting the opponent's next move. Allowing me to focus more on my own next move has made the study of Jiu Jitsu a lot more fun in recent months.
Finally, the DVD devotes significant time to efficient transitions from armbars attacks into other attacks. This includes transitions to leglock attacks which will be unfamiliar to most purchasers. Overall, I recommend this DVD anyone looking to solidify their base in BJJ fundamentals, and also anyone who would like to focus on strategies that provide consistent performance in competition.
