(BJJ) – Grappling Basics – Positions

This blog is aimed at people who are just starting Grappling or Mixed Martial Arts, for the experienced I know this is a very simplistic way of the complex and never-ending puzzle that is grappling.

But we all need a starting point, if you’re learning to ride a bike then you need to understand the basics e.g. “this is a peddle”, “this is how you balance” … etc. … Grappling is the same.

There is an old BJJ saying …. “Position before submission” what this means is that you should focus on position before looking to attack. For anyone learning to grapple I think it is best to keep things as simple as possible to help teach the basics of grappling positions, we are going to break them down to 5 positions:-

For each of these positions, there are 2 different scenarios … you are on top …. or you are on the bottom, so that is 10 different positions you can find yourself in.

Lets put a little bit of context to the position, again to keep things simple we will use a simple “Good” Vs “Bad” to describe what the position means, here is an example for Side Mount:-

Side Mount/Cross Body Top Position – GOOD – easy to move into different position and lots of submissions.

Side Mount/Cross Body Bottom Position – BAD – Top person weight is on top of you, they can move to positions easily and they can attack for submissions.

So if you are in bottom side mount (BAD) what should your goal be ? …. hopefully you are thinking escape and get out and not head squeeze and break stuff.

All of these positions can be broken down this way for beginners apart from Guard as this is the one position where the bottom person is potentially in the stronger position (GOOD)

So what next? ……. Time to start writing out your game plan !!! you have 10 positions, identify  if  you are in a “Good” or “Bad” position and plan your escape (Bad Position) or attack (Good Position)