John Danaher’s Front Headlock Tutorial Is His Best Yet
Danaher validates his philosophy of self-improvement by making a really nice instructional DVD
You won’t find any negative product reviews on this blog unless I review V8’s take on “energy drink”. My goal is to improve the world by encouraging people to seek out and study things that are good for them.
The brain often filters terrible advice into useful advice through the dynamic listening process. Likewise, good advice is often misunderstood. Given this reality, how can I know which DVD’s will benefit the reader?
The actual benefit an instructional confers is subjective, but Danaher’s Front Head Lock DVD surpasses his previous efforts on several objective criteria. Many of the changes address problems I mentioned in previous reviews. The DVD contains more novel information, the information is better organized, and the presentation is more engaging.
When I compared Firaz Zahabi’s excellent RDL Lockdown tutorial to Danaher’s Back Control System, I pointed out that Danaher spent too much time speaking into the camera and not moving. In his videos, Zahabi uses a superior method of speaking over footage of movements while annotating them with lines drawn on the footage itself. The result was that Zahabi covered as much information in 40 minutes and Danaher did in 6 hours, and still had time for sparring footage featuring live demonstrations of the movements. Danaher simply talked into the camera, leading to long stretches where I felt like I was listening to a radio play.
The drawn-out nature of the Danaher content forced John to repeat himself in case we forgot what he said 15 minutes ago. The inefficiency lead to a feedback loop which drew the content out even further. The information was fantastic, but the learning process was painful. Not so with the front headlock system! Although BJJ Fanatics’ production model doesn’t seem to allow narrated footage, Danaher talks through his movements so that the audio and visual elements complement each other.
I was very curious to see Danaher’s take on the front headlock because his back attack and leglock series were highly linear. The genius of the Danaher back attack method lies in efficient steps leading to the Rear Naked Choke with minimal gaps for escape. Both the back and leg systems focused on a primary path to a high percentage submission and then provided supplementary paths for situations where the primary path broke down. This didn’t seem like a reasonable approach to a headlock.
The front headlock is a dynamic position. It’s an entry point to nearly every upper body position, but it doesn’t provide the stable control of a back mount or even side control. The essence of the position is taking the initiative and allowing the opponent’s uncertainty to paralyze them long enough to lock in an attack. Danaher agrees with my assessment, and as a result, his headlock system is an explosion of highly effective offense. At one point Danaher serves up 5 magisterial Guillotine variations in under 30 minutes. The next 30 minutes are spent on arm triangles.
I look forward to John’s Kimura series. I am confident it will have equal or greater production values, and I’m excited to compare it to Renzo’s Kimura instructional. I highly recommend you invest in Danaher’s front headlock DVDs especially if you are preparing students for BJJ competition.
