Review: John Danaher’s Back Attack System
It’s a work of Genius, but is it worth $200?
This review hit’s the highlights of Part 1 of the instructional series, and explains what I found most significant about this justifiably expensive information product.
I heartily recommenced this video course. If you are the sort of person who likes learning new techniques from videos and trying them out during training, this DVD will provide you with weeks of entertainment. Furthermore, if you are interested in upgrading your ability to attack people from the back, Danaher’s instructions do that for you, even if you are already fairly proficient. However, jiu jitsu is not an inherently profitable endeavor and many of us don’t spend $200 on something unless it is potentially life changing. For those of us who intend to remain focused on martial arts indefinitely, this course indeed offers a brighter future.
Danaher’s leg lock system and back attack system both invite us to see BJJ in terms of “fundamental problems and their solutions”. Some experts prefer to see BJJ as a series of optimal movements performed in a sequence, and describe their “system” like a branching flow chart. Other experts describe BJJ as a state of optimal movement in accordance with heuristics, and say things like “BJJ isn’t something you “do,” it’s something your feel.”. Danaher takes a problem-solving approach.
In both the leg-lock system and the back system, Danaher points out the “fundamental challenges” an athlete must overcome to impose his or her will. Using this mindset Danaher points out, the minimum requirements for accomplishing a specific BJJ objective, and then focuses on satisfying these requirements in his favor. The leg-lock system was full of examples of this kind of thinking. For instance, Danaher’s emphasis on controlling the direction of the opponent’s knee put’s knee orientation over any specific position.
The emphasis on problem solving in the leglock system wast interesting, but there is no automatic link between an intellectual agreement with a combat technique, and the ability to apply it. The only way to fully appreciate a martial philosophy is to experience the results. Most of us will find the back attack system a much more visceral introduction to Danaher’s mind. It’s exactly because we already know how to perform this stuff that Danaher’s 6 hour dissertation is interesting. Even if you are fully committed to “don’t think, feel!” philosophy of combat, this DVD will be a fascinating mental vacation to the other side of the martial arts world.
The tutorials are also full of finer technical points some of which will help you shock and amaze your friends.
Danaher’s thesis is: The back mount is the most fundamentally advantageous position in submission grappling, because the human body is most vulnerable to attacks from behind. However, an athlete must overcome two fundamental problems in order to finish an opponent from this position.
- The attacker must keep his body aligned with the defender’s body (The Alignment Problem).
- 2) The attacker must overcome the fact that the defender has more defensive tools. (The Deficit Problem).
The core of Danaher’s system lies in maintaining Alignment through a clearly defined set of control principles, and then gaining a submission by neutralizing the opponent’s defensive tools.
A quick overview of Danaher’s approach to the alignment problem also summarizes his problem solving approach. Danaher first describes the primary importance of controlling rotation, and gives a beautiful tip on controlling the opponent’s shoulders with a seat-belt grip.
I mention the above, not in hopes of spoiling the DVD but as an illustration of how clear things become when BJJ is conceived as a hierarchy of goals. Why pinch with the elbow? To prevent rotation. Why prevent rotation? To keep back to chest contact. Why maintain contact? Because, back to chest contact is a minimum necessary condition for maintaining alignment, which in turn is necessary for back control and submission. In the absence of this kind of structured thinking, the tendency is to look at the position and say: “This looks like a squeezing position, I will adopt the goal of squeezing as hard as I can.” The result in that beginners often apply an excessive amount of force in a mechanically inferior way. Danaher’s clear objectives work to prevent this type of thinking and become a useful basis for future learning.
The Analytical approach to BJJ is not as prestigious as the intuitive one. It’s stunning to watch people display an intuitive understanding of BJJ based on years of training, constant drilling, and sparing. People also object to intellectualized BJJ because they feel it forces every trainee to adopt the same strategy even if they are better suited for a different style.
In my opinion these objections are applicable to the Technique-Flowchart approach to learning, but much less applicable to an approach like Danaher’s. The central problems of a position apply to every body-type and the approaches to solving them are only as good as the results they get within the value system defined by solving the problems. An athlete with only one arm would still have to solve the “Deficit Problem” in order to apply a Rear Naked Choke. For most athletes a combination of natural reflexes and logically organized “systems”, is probably optimal for developing optimal jiu jitsu skills.
