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Is John Danaher the best Jiu-Jitsu instructor?

by matmartial · Published February 28, 2020 · Updated October 26, 2020

John Danaher BJJ black belt
Best Jiu-jitsu instructor
Best Jiu-jitsu school — **Jiu-Jitsu black belt John Danaher watches one of his elite students compete from the side of the mat at a recent Jiu Jitsu competition.**

Is John Danaher as good at teaching Jiu-Jitsu as you think?

If you have been training Jiu-Jitsu or paying attention to Jiu-Jitsu for any amount of time recently, undoubtedly you will have heard about black belt Jiu-Jitsu instructor John Danaher. Who is this man and why are people talking about him?

John Danaher is a black belt in Jiu-jitsu under the legendary Renzo Gracie. Danaher is the head instructor at the Renzo Gracie Academy in New York City. Significantly, he is the head instructor for the Renzo Gracie elite competition team.

The answer to all of these questions is: yes, John Danaher is as good as you think he is. I don’t think there is even any debate about his skill and success as a Jiu-Jitsu instructor and coach.

Master of Philosophy

Born in 1967, in Washington D.C. to a pilot in the New Zealand air force, Danaher and his family returned to New Zealand where he was raised and grew up. He eventually earned his Bachelor’s and Masters’ degrees in philosophy from the University of Auckland. Danaher then moved to New York City to work on a Ph.D. in philosophy at Columbia University. However, upon arrival in Manhattan, Danaher discovered the Renzo Gracie Academy, and Jiu-Jitsu soon supplanted philosophy as his main focus.

It would be absurd to downplay the significance of Danaher’s education in philosophy. If you spend any time studying Jiu-Jitsu, you will quickly learn that Jiu-Jitsu itself has an essential philosophical component. No doubt all of the time and energy spent thinking about why things are the way they are and the nature of being have served Danaher extremely well on his road towards mastery of Jiu-Jitsu. And make no mistake, Danaher is a master of Jiu-Jitsu.

There are a few readily accessible resources that you can look at and see for yourself Danaher’s masterful philosophical approach to teaching Jiu-Jitsu.

Watch for yourself

I would refer you to bjjfanatics.com, and specifically the YouTube channel for bjjfanatics.com. In these videos you can watch and learn from Danaher as he and Jiu-Jitsu champion Bernardo Faria explore a wide variety of techniques. In each of these videos, Faria never fails to point out how “systematic” Danaher is in his approach to explaining Jiu-Jitsu techniques.

Bernardo Faria, a Jiu-Jitsu champion in his own right, even points out that some of the details Danaher explains about various techniques are so basic that Bernardo has been doing them subconsciously for his entire career without even thinking about them. This attention to detail is one of the reasons that John Danaher is an extraordinary Jiu Jitsu instructor.

Danaher has truly broken Jiu-Jitsu down to such an fundamental level that he does not miss any elements of any technique or move. It truly is quite remarkable. A perfect example of Danaher’s skill as a Jiu-Jitsu instructor is a video in which he breaks down the rear naked choke.

It takes him a whopping 22 minutes to demonstrate and explain, in exquisite detail, every aspect of this classic Jiu-Jitsu submission, the rear naked choke, or as Danaher calls it, the rear naked strangle. Here is the video:

Detailed instruction how to perform the perfect rear naked choke by Jiu Jitsu black belt John Danaher.

Known in Portuguese as Mata Leon, or the Lion Killer, the rear naked choke is the quintessential submission in Jiu-Jitsu. Even if you have been applying this choke in the gym for years, I encourage you to what the video and see if you don’t come away with a better understanding of the technique.

John Danaher gives Joe Rogan a Jiu-Jitsu lesson on the JRE Podcast

If you haven’t listened to or watched Danaher’s epic appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, I encourage you to do so. If you can, I would recommend that you might want to watch it on YouTube. You can follow along with the video of the Jiu-Jitsu matches that the two black belts break down, and the insightful details that I think might help your game.

Joe Rogan is also a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu. In fact, I believe Rogan holds two black belts in Jiu-Jitsu: his first from Jean Jacque Machado, and his second in Tenth Planet Jiu Jitsu from Eddie Bravo.

Everyone knows that Rogan has been involved with the UFC for decades, and I would add that his color commentary in some of the UFC fights earlier this century is responsible to some degree to the growth that Jiu-Jitsu has enjoyed as a sport during the last two decades. Even the legendary Rickson Gracie has acknowledged Rogan’s infectious passion and skill for educating early UFC audiences about Jiu-Jitsu.

Rogan’s appreciation for the grappling skills of pioneering MMA fighters like BJ Penn stand out as some of his best work, and most important work for popularizing the sport of Jiu-Jitsu.

Joe Rogan is a Jiu Jitsu black belt

Even with all of this high level and high-profile experience in Jiu-Jitsu, I don’t think that Rogan anticipated the educational clinic put on by Danaher when he came to the JRE Studios to record the podcast. If you don’t have time to watch the entire 2 hour and 38-minute podcast, I would encourage you to watch two clips.

In the first clip, Danaher simplifies Jiu-Jitsu into a Four Step system. I will admit that Danaher comes off as a little bit overly pedantic in this clip, and catches Rogan a little off guard.

Rogan remains humble and plays a good sport. In the clip, Danaher even admits to being a bit of an asshole. Here is the video:

John Danaher explains the philosophy of his four step system of Jiu-Jitsu on the Joe Rogan podcast.

In the second clip, Danaher and Rogan watch Danaher’s standout protege Gordon Ryan defeat fellow Jiu-Jitsu black belt Roberto “Cyborg” Abreu at the 2017 ADCC.

The video clip presents a little more advanced explanation of Jiu-Jitsu, particularly advanced leg lock analysis, which is exactly why I include it.

Danaher has been credited with furthering the development of the leg lock game in modern Jiu-Jitsu. To his credit, Danaher tells Rogan that Dean Lister is responsible for inspiring him to develop his leg lock system.

Dean Lister apparently asked Danaher one simple, game-changing, philosophical question: “Why would you ignore half of the human body?” Little could he have known that he had set off a Jiu Jitsu revolution.

In this video, you can easily appreciate how much thought and analysis Danaher has put in to his Jiu-Jitsu philosophy. Here is the clip:

John Danaher breaks down Gordon Ryan’s leg lock victory over Cyborg Abreu at the ADCC championships on the Joe Rogan podcast.

Is John Danaher a good Jiu-Jitsu coach?

In addition to being able to watch and evaluate some of his Jiu-Jitsu instruction for yourself in these and other videos, the Jiu Jitsu competition records of Danaher’s students against elite competition also confirm that fact that Danaher is as good of a Jiu-Jitsu instructor as exists in the sport and currently teaching today.

Danaher’s resume boasts such successful students as long time UFC champion Georges St. Pierre. In fact, GSP is a two-division champion in the UFC. When he returned from retirement to claim the middle weight belt at 185 pounds, GSP defeated defending champ Michael Bisping with Jiu Jitsu. St. Pierre became a two division champion by submitting Bisping with, what else? The rear naked strangle.

The Success of John Danaher’s Jiu-Jitsu Students

Finally, some of the best Jiu-Jitsu grapplers competing in the world today are Danaher students.

Gordon Ryan might be one of the best grapplers in the history of the sport. When he defeated Cyborg at the 2017 ADCC, he had only been training Jiu-Jitsu for 6 and a half, or seven years.

If you watch any of Ryan’s instructional videos available on YouTube, you will notice that his instructional style is eerily similar to Danaher’s methodical and systematic approach to explaining techniques with great detail.

Danaher’s clinical and stoic style may come across as tedious to some. But I think few would deny (if nothing else for fear of being choked out by those who know) that he is one of the greatest Jiu-Jitsu minds of the modern era.

If you enjoyed this article, please come back often and check out some of our other posts about Jiu-Jitsu.

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