George Patton & John Danaher on Speed Part 1

Article 2 (Combat & Strategy)

George Patton and John Danaher on Speed

George Patton has been credited with “out-blitzkrieg(ing)” the creators of the art of modern maneuverable warfare, particularly in the tactics involving armor. 

There are many quotes floating around on stoic instagram pages and those fostering Americana or military mindsets of Patton saying something having to do with speed itself. 

“Speed Kills.” 

“Lead Me, Follow Me, or Get Out of My Way.”

“A Pint of Sweat Will Save a Gallon of Blood.”

It’s unsurprising coming from the man who embarked upon a route twice as long than that of his counterpart, Bernard Montgomery in the “Race for Messina,” and still came out on top. 

But George S. Patton did not cement himself as one of the greatest generals both of the 20th Century and of all time by relying on speed in its rawest form alone. 

Patton cultivated both on a micro and macro scale, the two kinds of speed that were heralded as the most important in combat by one of the greatest tactical minds the world has ever seen. 

His name is John Danaher, and unless your knee-deep in the all-consuming world jiu-jitsu or a devoted listener to the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, you’ve likely never heard of him. 

John Danaher is a native New Zealander who traveled to New York City to obtain his PhD in philosophy at Columbia University. 

While studying in Morningside Heights, Danaher paid bills by working as a bouncer at various night clubs across Manhattan, using his large stature cultivated from powerlifting as a deterrent to any ideas of nonsensical behavior in the minds of patrons. 

However, several of Danaher’s co-workers in security were better equipped for diffusing potential conflicts than he was due to their trained combat prowess in Brazilian jiu-jitsu under the tutelage of Renzo Gracie. 

Eventually, Danaher walked onto the mats of the claustrophobic urban gym, and his philosopher mind was applied to the world of competitive hand to hand combat. 

After years of training under Renzo, Danaher rubbed shoulders with San Diego-based grappler, Dean Lister who was one of the pioneers in “leg-locking,” a practice that had been seen as both controversial and clumsy in the eyes the jiu-jitsu mainstream. 

John Danaher told Joe Rogan all of the aforementioned origin story during his first appearance on Rogan’s podcast, and then stopped to tell him of one sentence spoken to him by Dean Lister that changed his life regarding the taboo practice of leg-locking:

“Why would you ignore 50 percent of the human body?”

Jiu-jitsu had been as Danaher broke down, a system that was mono-directional in four clear steps to victory:

 1. Take your opponent to the Ground

 2. Get passed the opponent’s legs

 3. Work your way through of a sequence of pins that are effective in throwing strikes

 4. Attempt a submission 

To simplify, you subdue the legs to either choke the opponent or joint lock one of his upper body extremities.

Locking the legs had been practiced somewhat commonly in Japan and in scarcer instances in several other places, all of which categorized as “clumsy” or simply deplo resorts for when the aforementioned system failed in achieving control.

This was comically highlighted by Danaher stating, if the system failed, many would be tempted by the line of thinking, “fuck it, try a leg lock.” 

Danaher however, concluded that if one created a methodology of grappling that involved a system of control surrounding leg-locking, one would dominate the world of jiu-jitsu. 

Danaher developed such a system for years, training multiple athletes who went on to take over the No-Gi jiu-jitsu world throughout the majority of the 2010s.

Gary Tonon, Eddie Cummings, Craig Jones, Jake Shields, and Gordon Ryan massacred all the competition in front of them,  eventually earning the name, “The Danaher Death Squad.”

Danaher stated to Joe Rogan that his system of leg-locking made jiu-jitsu go from a mono-directional system of combat to a bi-directional system of combat, granting them a sea of different options in decision as opposed to half as many in the traditional system. 

This granted an overarching philosophy to the rest of their tactical talk.

When this conversation traveled to discussing the quality of speed in fighting, Danaher somewhat refuted Rogan in his placing value in the quality of speed in its rawest form.

Raw speed itself rarely makes all-time great champions. If a naturally fast opponent does not learn how to apply his speed, he will be easily neutralized by a competitor who better understands spacing, timing, and strategy.

Danaher highly rated two types of speed in the realm of combat:

Speed of Decision

Speed of Changing Direction

Making decisions before one’s opponent whether they be in pure offensive efforts or in counter-striking will mathematically set one up for success.

Attacks in fighting often come in straight lines even at the pro level. The competitors who set themselves apart from the rest to become champions are competitors who master angles and can neutralize their opponent’s attacks by changing the direction their opponent needs to go in order to continue their attack, therefore stripping an attack of its momentum.

Both of these types of speed often overload the mind of the opponent.

When one’s decision-making process is not as fast as one’s opponent, said competitor often reaches a point of confusion in which he discards any form of strategy and begins to “brawl,” lowering his likelihood of success.

When one can’t build any kind of momentum in his attacks, this often breeds frustration and a similar kind of abandonment of sound, logical decision-making.

A perfect example of both kinds of speed in the boxing world is that of Oleksandr Usyk, the Ukrainian fighter who is best known for his use of angles.

Formidable opponents have been neutralized by his misdirection through his quick speed of decision and his constant physical changes of direction.

Often times, Usyk’s opponents, despite having more raw punching power due to typically having height and size advantages on him can rarely apply it in the context of actually catching Usyk with a power punch due his speed of decision and speed of changing direction. Anthony Joshua, standing 6’6, weighing in at 250 pounds looked more confused than focussed throughout his 24 rounds with Usyk across two fights, as Usyk, standing 6’3 and weighing in at 225 pounds danced around Joshua at every angle making two to three decisions within every position compared to Joshua’s one.

Truths in combat at the micro level are truths in combat at the macro level.

George Patton was a student of standards of discipline and combat on the micro level as a lifelong fencer, military historian from a young age turned  cavalry officer, tank pioneer of World War One, and all-time great general in World War Two.

Men who served General Patton were held to the highest standard of discipline in all things.

An all-time favorite Patton quote of many is about discipline itself:

“There is only one sort of discipline - PERFECT DISCIPLINE. Men cannot have good battle discipline and poor administrative discipline. No sane man is unafraid in battle, but discipline produces in him a form of vicarious courage.”

Patron understood that how one does anything is how one does everything, and when one drills perfect discipline in all things, efficiency increases.

With efficiency comes speed in its rawest form. With this kind of speed came the capability of quicker decision-making and a greater ability for changing direction quickly.

This is true on the micro level and on the macro level.

John Danaher has explained that he’s a dictator with fundamentals in jiu-jitsu and a libertarian with their application. Every athlete of his has to drill fundamentals to perfection with perfect discipline before adapting their usage to their respective mindset, personality, physical attributes, and tactics.

With the entirety of Patton’s army practicing perfect discipline, Patton’s army was able to execute their General’s decisions at high speeds, and had the capability of shifting to his tactics that were inherently reliant on speed, precision, and maneuverability.

A consistent misunderstanding about Patton in the mind of the common man is that Patton’s nickname “Old Blood & Guts,” was due to a reckless, high casualty, “forward regardless of circumstances,” mentality. This couldn’t be further from the truth. “Old Blood & Guts” came from his instruction to his officers regarding their ethos of combat, explaining to them a both literal and rhetorical circumstance of being “up to their neck in blood and guts.”

If George Patton was a combat sports athlete, he would be a high IQ pressure fighter. Pressure fighters are often know for being constantly moving forward to inflict as much damage as possible while taking an exceptional amount of damage. Often times, pressure fighters leave themselves open for crisp, powerful counter strikes, quickly putting an end to their forward onslaught.

Perfect examples of this in mixed martial arts come in the form of two Brazilian pressure fighters getting knocked out in the summer of 2016.

Glover Teixeira and Fabricio Werdum found themselves knocked out within the first minute of the first round of their fights against Anthony Johnson and Stipe Miocic respectively.

Pressure and speed alone do not win fights and therefore do not win battles.

However, Patton was not a man of speed and pressure alone. Speed and pressure were deployed in the correct contexts with the correct tactics that adapted to given circumstances.

An analysis of efficiency of combat between the Allied forces in the European theatre and the Nazi military shows a drastic difference in efficiency.

“Peter Turchin reports a study by American colonel Trevor Dupuy found that German combat efficiency was higher than both the British and American armies - if a combat efficiency of 1 was assigned to the British, then the Americans had a combat efficiency of 1.1 and the Germans of 1.45. This would mean British forces would need to commit 45% more troops (or arm existing troops more heavily to the same proportion) to have an even chance of winning the battle, while the Americans would need to commit 30% more to have an even chance.”

Patton was the exception to the rule.

END PART 1

Part 2 will be released on Tuesday, October 11th, 2022 at 7pm CST.