Modern Jiu Jitsu Basics Part 1 of 7
"What do I know now that I wish I'd been taught in the beginning?"
What constitutes “basics” anymore?
Jiu jitsu has changed a lot since I started ten years ago.
On a big-picture level, we’ve seen the popularization of leglocking systems and the integration of wrestling. On a more fine-grained level, we’ve seen the development of countless online instructionals detailing strategies and tactics for nearly every imaginable sub-sub-sub-section of the game.
Additionally, we are starting to see more coaches around the country(globe) looking to sports science for advice on how to structure the learning environment for better outcomes.
This is just scraping the surface of the changes we’ve seen, but its more than enough to inspire the question, what do we teach beginners these days? Or, alternatively, what basics should advanced practitioners look to when circling back to shore up foundational skills?
I’ve come up with a list of 5 general things that, knowing what I know now, I’d want a coach to have taught me when I began. In other words, here is my take on “modern” jiu jitsu basics.
Defensive Posture
Maneuvering
Control Points
Dominant Positions
High Percentage Submissions
I’ll introduce each of these topics now, and then I’ll write a deep-dive post about each of them individually.
1) Defensive Posture
If you aren’t already familiar with Priit Mihkelson, quit reading and go watch this video. It’ll be the best 80 minutes you’ve ever invested in your jiu jitsu.
Ignoring for a moment the specific positions that Priit emphasizes, let’s consider what a defensive posture is, and why its at the top of my list.
A quick aside. I didn’t learn about the idea of defensive posture until purple belt, and I’m convinced that if I were to ask a blue or purple belt who had never heard of Priit to describe a defensive posture, they would tell me about one of two things (neither of which is wrong, but both of which are still secondary to defensive posture). I’d expect to hear about — frames and escapes.
I’ll dig in deeper next time about how I think frames are commonly misunderstood and misused. And I’ll point out the obvious which is that escapes aren’t a posture (but they are what people think of first when you say “defense”)
The key for now when thinking of defensive posture is that it must be:
Universal
Good defensive posture can be implemented regardless of your orientation to your opponent, winning-losing, top-bottom, standing-grounded, etc.
Structurally Relevant
Priit gives the example of a boxer covering his chin. The boxer knows that a strike to the chin has an increased chance of knockout so he positions his hands, shoulders, and forehead to make access difficult.
Defensive posture involves denying your opponent access to what they need in order to control you (underhooks, collar tie, seatbelt, etc.). How you do this must account for the angles/orientations where your joints and muscles are strongest AND can be maintained efficiently.
Defensive posture happens before you engage in tactics like grip fighting, level/angle changing, etc. and should be maintained throughout the engagement. In fact, the entire process of jiu jitsu — establishment of positional dominance in pursuit of submission — could be described in terms of breaking down and neutralizing the opponent’s defensive posture.
2) Maneuvering
There are three layers to movement, and the skilled coordination of these layers of movement make the difference between two otherwise equally “strong” individuals. Understanding how to move allows the skilled practitioner to position himself where his own strength can be applied with superior mechanical advantage relative to his opponent’s strength.
These three layers of movement are, in order of increasing complexity:
Move your body in relation to itself, the mat, and gravity.
This includes developing the capacity to orient yourself to yourself regardless of your orientation to the mat (think inversions).
Move your body in relation to your opponent’s body.
It is almost always easier to move yourself than it is to move your opponent. Thus the most direct way to get to the grip or the angle you need is not to move through your opponent, but around/over/under them.
Move your opponent’s body.
The more skilled you are at maneuvering, the better access you have to the angles and grips that allow you to apply force in a way your opponent cannot easily resist.
In addition to being able to force your opponent to move in a specific direction, blocking your opponent’s ability to move is often even more important — think breaking mechanics and winning scrambles.
3) Control Points
Okay, 48 more minutes of video for you. This will be the second most important jiu jitsu instructional you’ve seen (after the one with Priit above).
Chris articulates 5 control points:
Behind the head
Behind the knees (2 points)
Under the armpits (2 points)
Inhabiting your opponent’s control points offers you three important offensive considerations.
Control points give you superior grip and leverage on your opponent allowing you to general control their movement
Control points can be used to attempt to control the adjacent joints with in order to execute submissions.
Control points allow you to manipulate your opponent’s postural integrity, weight distribution, or balance.
You could meaningfully analyze any given position by describing how many of your opponent’s control points you inhabit versus how many of yours they inhabit and have a pretty good rubric for determining who is “winning”. You’ll find this correlates well with the traditional scoring positions.
4) Dominant Positions
Dominant positions and scoring positions are almost the same thing (scoring positions are a subset of dominant positions). Add in some leglock positions (saddle, backside 50/50, etc.) plus front headlock and you have 80% or more of them covered.
There is also a strong argument to be made for specialized dominant positions, positions that require advanced dexterity or above average flexibility (I’m thinking about the crucifix or some of the rubberguard variants, but there are lots more).
Rather than trying to make an exhaustive list, lets focus on what makes a position dominant. Consider the following criteria from both the defensive and offensive perspective.
Dominant positions provide access to your opponent’s control points.
Inversely — limitation of their access to your control points
Dominant positions limit your opponent’s movement options.
Inversely — freedom to move yourself (freedom to re-adjust or advance your position)
Dominant positions are immediately adjacent to submission setups.
Inversely — opponent does not have viable submission options readily at hand
If you remember only one thing from this section, let it be this! Dominant positions are all about maintenance. I can describe every little hidden feature of mount or back mount or whatever, but if you can’t feel the subtleties, the knowledge wont matter.
Ability to control dominant positions must be embodied.
The only way to develop this is through time in the position. If you’ve been training for a while then you’re probably familiar with positional sparring (where you start in a designated position and work from there). In my experience, positional sparring is the most underutilized tool in the coach’s toolbox.
Lack of time spent managing, maintaining, and controlling a dominant position is THE REASON that lower belts have difficulty successfully executing the submissions they learned in class during live rounds.
The only way to get better at dominant positions is to spend time in them.
5) High Percentage Submissions
The deeper you go into jiu jitsu, the more you realize the crazy variety of ways that a human can be injured. Conversely, the deeper you go, the more you realize how radically creative people can be in escaping harm.
The decision of which submissions are “basics” should flow naturally from which dominant positions you emphasize. Regardless of the specific dominant position we are using to setup our submissions, when thinking “basics”, we are looking for submissions that:
Require the least fine-motor coordination to execute
The rear naked choke is “more basic” than the back triangle armbar because the setup and finishing mechanics are less complex (in spite of the deep nuances of handfighting)
Keep the attacker as close as possible to the defender’s control points
Distal joint attacks such as ankle locks, toe holds, and wrist locks, while extremely effective, can present greater challenge to controlling the defender’s movement and posture
Are low-risk, i.e. if your attempted submission fails, the opponent is not necessarily presented with the option of an immediate escape
If an opponent defends an arm triangle attempt from the mount, the attacker is typically able to reset their mount or transition to back control, whereas a failed s-mount armbar often leads to a scramble or a positional downgrade (side-control).
For each dominant position that you choose to emphasize, it would be wise to have at least two high percentage submissions available. Three would be even better, but depending on the dominant position, attacks beyond those first two are likely to be higher risk in one of the categories described above.
5b) Breaking/Finishing Mechanics
While some of this knowledge flows naturally from practicing submissions, if a coach takes the time to show a beginner why a technique works, it will improve their ability to troubleshoot the technique if it isn’t working quite right.
The armbar is a great example of this. Because the shoulder joint has such a wide range of safe motion, it can sometimes be very difficult to get that last 1% of the way to submission against a skilled defender. But if the attacker knows what they’re trying to accomplish (as opposed to simply executing a rote formula), they can maintain control of the limb AND make subtle changes their own grip, to the opponent’s wrist orientation, to which part of their own body the arm is being bent over, etc.
In the case of the advanced practitioner, understanding of breaking mechanics opens up avenues for creativity. The advanced practitioner can be asking himself questions like, “How can I apply these forces even if I have insufficient control for submission? Can I apply enough leverage to force my opponent to respect the attack? Where would they go to escape the the threat if I did so?”
Why basics even matter.
I polled the audience in consideration for this series and I got a really good insight from my friend Tim which I’ve summarized as follows:
Basics underpin your jiu jitsu regardless of your style, regardless of your competition format, regardless of your reason for training.
Next time we’ll take a deep dive into defensive posture.
Good Hunting,
Charles