--- title: "Foundation of Offense: Turtle and Front Headlock" description: Gordon Ryan's instructional series on front headlock and turtle. Danaher / B-Team lineage. section: body tags: [bjj, instructional, gordon-ryan, danaher-system, b-team, front-headlock, turtle] genre: index lastUpdated: 2026-05-01 url: https://fardiniqbal.com/docs/body/mat/sources/foundation-of-offense --- **Instructor:** Gordon Ryan. **Lineage:** Danaher system (B-Team). **Why I'm switching from Brian Glick:** Glick's techniques work, but his explanations weren't detailed enough for me to actually figure out how to do them. I tried to drill, didn't land, and concluded the problem was depth of instruction. Gordon goes more granular on the mechanics — hand-position taxonomy, defensive-hand framework, why "seated kata-gatame" isn't a guillotine — and that's the level of detail I need to embody this material. The Brian Glick volumes stay on the site as a record of what I worked through first. Going forward, this is the instructional I'm following. ## Volumes [#volumes] * [**Volume 01** — Conceptual Foundations & Submission Defense](/docs/body/mat/sources/foundation-of-offense/volume-01) Wrestling vs. jiu-jitsu in front headlock. Hand-position taxonomy (six grips). Top player's goals; bottom player's goals. The standard defensive hand position. Three early-stage submission escapes: guillotine / seated kata-gatame rolling escape, anaconda thumb-post & kip, D'Arce forward roll. ## Why Volume 01 matters [#why-volume-01-matters] Volume 01 is foundational. It does two things: 1. **Builds the framework.** Hand-position taxonomy + top/bottom goals + defensive-hand framework. Every position escape in later volumes inherits this language. 2. **Teaches the defensive hand position.** The single skill I have to drill before any of the position escapes (sit to half guard, on-knees, four-point, standing) make sense — because all of those start from a defended posture. The actual position escapes are previewed here as a roadmap but technically broken down in later volumes. ## Watching along [#watching-along] Every timestamp button on this site opens the at the exact second referenced. Click any `[HH:MM:SS]` inside the transcript, or any timestamp button on the principle or skill page, and land at the moment of the source video that the note was taken from.