Are John Danaher Books Suitable For BJJ Beginners To Learn?

I’m a newer practitioner who loves nerding out, and honestly Danaher’s material fired up my curiosity — but it wasn’t the best place to start. His explanations are crystal-clear and logical, and watching his sequences feels like watching a masterclass in cause-and-effect. That said, when I first tried to replicate moves I’d seen, I kept getting caught because I missed the little fundamentals: hip movement, base, and the feel for when a grip is actually dominant.

What I ended up doing was using his videos as a study supplement. I’d learn a basic technique in class, then watch Danaher to understand the why behind it. That approach helped me avoid the frustration of trying advanced entries too early. Also, leg locks from his series are awesome but can be dangerous if you’re rolling hard with folks who don’t tap cleanly; so I’d recommend waiting until you and your partners agree to controlled practice. If you’re excited and patient, you’ll get a lot out of his material, but if you want a single place to start, pair it with a fundamentals-focused resource and lots of supervised drilling — and ask questions in class about how Danaher’s ideas match what your coach teaches.

I get excited talking about Danaher because his approach feels like a map rather than a recipe — but that’s also the crux for beginners. John Danaher’s material (mostly his instructional series and seminar notes rather than traditional books) is incredibly systematic: he breaks positions and transitions into small, repeatable concepts and often teaches with a hierarchy of control in mind. For someone who’s already comfortable with basic positions, his stuff accelerates understanding massively. You start to see why a certain control leads to a particular submission chain, and that conceptual clarity can compound your progress quicker than random techniques picked up in class.

That said, I’d be honest: if you’re brand-new to BJJ, diving straight into Danaher’s catalog can feel like trying to read advanced math before you’ve learned algebra. There’s a lot of technical nuance and positional prerequisites — the minutiae of grips, angles, and weight distribution — that only make sense if you’ve built basic movement, escapes, and posture through hours of drilling and rolling. I’ve watched beginners try to mimic sequences from his leg lock and guard systems and get frustrated because they hadn’t yet developed the hip mobility, timing, or positional control to execute them safely. Safety is important: many of his techniques (especially leg locks) are powerful and can lead to injuries if attempted without partner understanding and control.

So how should a beginner use Danaher’s stuff? Treat it like a textbook you consult after class. Learn fundamentals in the gym with a coach, then use his material to deepen your conceptual understanding. Pick one focused topic — for example positional control or top pressure concepts — and study Danaher’s explanations alongside drilling and live practice. Mix it with more beginner-oriented resources like 'Jiu-Jitsu University' to build that foundation. Finally, be patient and curious: annotate videos or notes, ask your instructor how a Danaher concept fits into your gym’s curriculum, and don’t rush to apply advanced submissions in hard sparring. When used as a supplement rather than a starting point, his work is gold; used as a starting point, it’s likely to overwhelm and stall progress. I personally still revisit his material from time to time when I want to tidy up a positional detail or re-frame how I think about a sequence, and it always rewards a careful, stepwise approach.