This post breaks down key concepts from a recent webinar focusing on distance management, control, and posture breaking in Jiu-Jitsu that I watched on Chris Paine’s Patreon. No matter your current skill level, understanding the fundamentals will significantly elevate your game.

Understanding Distance

The initial stages in grappling require you to understand distance. In MMA, a reach advantage allows you to establish grips and initiate attacks earlier than your opponent. So a taller person with a longer reach has that advantage going for them in certain positions. They can hunt for chokes sooner, and a shorter person might struggle to secure an underhook.

Here are key points to be aware of in the initial stages:

  • Taller Individuals: Focus on strong pinches, leveraging your reach advantage. Be mindful of control gaps.
  • Shorter Individuals: Prioritize hand fighting, entries, and precise distancing. While submissions might be harder to secure, tighter control is your advantage.

So if you are average or short going against a taller person, try not to leave any gaps and be as tight as possible. Any grappling fight starts the moment you and your opponent touch, so hand fighting is a crucial skill. High-level grapplers target people's fingers to limit the usage of their opponent’s hands, which is why you see wrestlers default to targeting fingers in standup. That is the correct way to approach this because that is where the fight starts. This means that if your opponent is grabbing your head, then your hand fighting was not effective. I mean grabbing your head or snapping your head down in standup, or grabbing your head as your opponent is passing guard.

If you're on the bottom, then you deal with the hands and climb up using over, under, round, and through techniques—just like if you were wrestling from the stand-up position. Chris says the guard exists because, if you end up on the bottom, you use your legs to compensate for the loss of connection to the ground, which is why you end up in the iconic BJJ position with your back on the floor. He says that a good BJJ practitioner uses their feet as well as their hands while applying the same principles of hand fighting to guard passing and guard retention. It’s the same as how a good wrestler uses footwork to look for angles.

Hand Fighting: Getting Past the Elbows

To break someone's posture, you need access to their spine. This means you need to get past your opponent's elbows or knees if they are on guard. So the options are over, under, around, or through. Going through means cutting straight through the middle to access the bicep and head and control those areas. From there, you may have access to underhooks, head control, bicep control, the inside line, and center line.

You can also try to get their elbows by using parries, arm drags, or Russian tie-ups. Ideally, you want to make your opponent upright or flat, which gives you a quick route into the important areas that will allow you to work. It is also all continuously a trade-off, since you should be mixing up your attacks, alternating between the center line and flanking on the outside to keep your opponent guessing.

Posture: The Key to Power and Control

So when it comes to posture, the main idea is you need to attack the periphery of your opponent, basically their arms, legs, and neck, to gain access to their spine. Then isolate their spine, and then re-attack the periphery.

Posture, which is defined as the alignment of the spine, shoulders, and hips, is important in Jiu-Jitsu. Successful actions after spine isolation when rolling someone require a posture break of your opponent. Chris says to ask yourself constantly: Did you break their posture, or did they already have broken posture?

Think of your body as having three key components:

  • Engine: Your muscles and power generation.
  • Gas Tank: Your endurance and ability to generate power over time.
  • Tires: Your connection to the ground.

A powerful engine and a full gas tank are useless if you have poor "tires." Your connection to the ground dictates your power output. Even on your back, you’re still generating power through ground connection if your connection to the ground is good.

Manipulating the spine affects power creation effectiveness. By breaking your opponent's posture, you limit their ability to generate power and defend effectively.

Chris says to think about this from the perspective of being a photographer. A really good photographer understands light and how to use it to consistently create compelling images. In the same way, a grappler must understand posture to create submission opportunities.

Without understanding light, a good photo is just luck. Similarly, a submission achieved without breaking posture is often just a fluke. Break posture to access attacks and "make your own luck" on the mats.