Danaher, who is fifty and looks like a bulky, bald Robin Williams, trains the Death Squad in the humid blue-and-gray basement of Renzo Gracie Academy, around the corner from Madison Square Garden. Some sixty grapplers show up on weekdays, at seven-thirty and noon, for the most innovative jujitsu class in the country. But the competitive core of the squad, its R. & D. department, is much smaller. This group is conducting a research program dedicated to systematizing “the art and science of control that leads to submission,” as Danaher likes to put it. Cummings, a former physicist, is a calculated leg locker; Tonon thrives in chaotic scrambles; and Nicky Ryan, just sixteen years old, already beats adult black belts with preternatural calm. “The research has a similar feel to experimental physics,” Cummings told me. “You cheat, you look for ways to cut corners, make approximations here or there, ask yourself how you can play with the system, what if I lose this grip or that wedge, h
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